Hi John, thanks for the link.
On 27 August 2014 21:34, John McClure <jmccl...@hypergrove.com> wrote: > Without a specified value, then the object is unspecified > ... so the model you wonder about becomes just "subject-predicate" > ... thereby breaking the predominant model we live with No, you confuse the empty (i.e. zero-length) string with the empty node (call it null, nil, epsilon, blank node, whatever). You also seem to take shortcuts from "real life" directly down to lexical representation (and the other way around). Have a look at para 7. (Literals and datatypes) of the standard you linked: "RDF literals and datatypes are fully described in Section 5 of [RDF11-CONCEPTS]." Now, if you look at that reference you will find in section 5.1: "The XML Schema built-in types listed in the following table are the RDF-compatible XSD types." And if you then follow the link on "xsd:string" you will find: "The ·value space· of string is the set of finite-length sequences of zero or more characters (as defined in [XML]) that ·match· the Char production from [XML]." I am not sure, whether SMW does (or even could) support the Char production from XML, but the key here is the "zero or more characters". I think I remember having read that SMW was not build to provide a language that is capable to express everything RDF can express. It probably couldn't, given that annotations have to be embedded into wikitext somehow. Nevertheless it does not make sense to me to limit its capabilities where it is not dictated by the limitations of the context, namely wikitext. So I assume, there must be some other compelling reason for these limitations. And there should be more to it than "We can not imagine any useful interpretation of your triples in real life." In fact (hi, Nathan), in my world every goat has a capital and half of them are known under the empty string. Or, to quote an old teacher of mine: What does the cow care if I call it a steam engine. Cheers, Stephan Oh, P.S.: RDF does know blank nodes. See http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-mt/#blank-nodes. They "are treated as simply indicating the existence of a thing". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. http://tv.slashdot.org/ _______________________________________________ Semediawiki-devel mailing list Semediawiki-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-devel
