ThingsVersusTheirNames

From W3C Wiki

In natural languageFootNote(well, English anyway. In Spanish, they say "me llamo ...", in Italian "mi chiamo ..." i.e. "I call myself...".), we say "My name is Dan" and "I am Dan" almost interchangeably. By analogy, folks tend to write


<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/">
  <dc:creator>Dan Connolly</dc:creator>
</rdf:Description>


and


<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/">
  <dc:creator rdfs:parseType="Resource">
    <foaf:name>Dan Connolly</foaf:name>
  </dc:creator>
</rdf:Description>


almost interchangeably. But if you think formally, i.e. like a machine, these are very different. The first one seems to say that a web page was created by a string starting with the letter D. The second is much more clear: a web page was created by a person whose name is a string starting with the letter D.

see also: things versus pages about things, i.e. SubjectIndicator, and the related PPR:AntiPattern OverloadedUri; RestaurantsVersusTheirReviews; PersonsVersusTheirDescriptions and PropertiesForNaming.


Is the range of DublinCore creator person or string, or some union thereof? The union approach clashes with OWL-DL.


numbers versus numerals.

level-breaking, log:uri

LinkMe: RDFCore reification issues; "use/mention..." thread in rdf-logic, rdfcore.

LinkMe: DanC's comments to dc-architecture

It is a lazy English thing. In French they even say "the function whose equation is f(x)=" instead of "the function f(x)=" --AndrewCates