A note comparing Conceptual Graphs and RDF/Semantic Web from Tim Berners-Lee on 2001-01-18 (www-rdf-logic@w3.org from January 2001) (original) (raw)

----- Original Message ----- From: "McBride, Brian" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> To: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; <www-rdf-logic@w3.org> Cc: <danbri@w3.org> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 6:55 AM Subject: RE: Reification quoting in RDF/N3 was: A note comparing Conceptual Graphs and RDF/Semantic Web

[snip]

However, in the RDF syntax there is a known problem there. You can't quote something without asserting it.

I'm not sure I understand the problem. Simplifying your example for clarity:

rdf:RDF rdf:Statement <rdf:subject rdf:about="mary"/> <rdf:predicate rdf:about="wants to marry"/> <rdf:object rdf:about="Fred"/> <foo:believedBy rdf:about="John"/>

as I understand things, the above quotes (wants to marry, mary, Fred) without asserting it, if I understand correctly what you mean by 'quotes'.

Please could you give a concrete example of the bug you had in mind?

Oh, I agree that it is fine if you express the reified form. What you can't do is:

rdf:rdf <rdf:description bagID="a" about="#Mary"> <foo;wantstomarry resource="#Fred"/> <rdf:description about="#John"> <bar:believes resource="#a"/>

without asserting #a. The unreified form is of course much more paletable. A simple extension to fix this would be:

rdf:rdf <rdf:quote ID="a"> <rdf:description about="#Mary"> <foo;wantstomarry resource="#Fred"/> <rdf:description about="#John"> <bar:believes resource="#a"/>

TimBL

Brian McBride HPLabs

Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 16:04:29 UTC