> > Still, if one takes a rather loose view that dereferencing a
> > namespace URI may provide a representation of the namespace,
> > but not necessarily limited *only* to a representation of
> > the namespace alone, then we're probably OK.
>
> Wow... now that is subtle! But I think I like it....
It's the only view that I've been able to live with,
though interestingly (and worrysome) is that RDDL is
not compatible with that view IMO since a RDDL document
does not actually enumerate the members of a namespace
but rather describes *other* resources than the namespace
which have some relation to the terms in the namespace.
So a RDDL document is not, per se, a *representation* of
a namespace, but metadata which simply references the
namespace or individual terms in that namespace. Sigh...
> Also...
>
> > A namespace is nothing but a set of names. A namespace includes
> > *nothing* about how those names are used. A namespace imparts
> > no semantics whatsoever to the names residing in that namespace.
>
> OK, but (I think) this paragraph is referring to "namespace" in the
> sense of "XML Namespace".
Correct.
> I think my question yesterday was whether "DCMI namespace" as
> defined in
> [1] was (perhaps unintentionally!) in fact being used to mean
> something
> slightly different from an "XML namespace" i.e.
>
> - a collection of _terms_ (rather than just names), where a
> term is a DC
> element (not XML element), element refinement or encoding scheme (i.e.
> not just a name-without-semantics but a concept-with-semantics )
>
> On this basis, I think the "semantic surplus" in the RDF/XML
> representation is much less of a problem if that RDF/XML document is
> regarded as a representation of a "DCMI namespace".
True, though then you have ambiguity if the same URI denotes both
an XML namespace and a DCMI namespace and hence this would not
be compatible with the view above.
It would only be compatible if we did not consider namespace URIs
to denote the namespace itself, but only as punctuation, and that
those URIs may denote anything whatsoever and the thing denoted
need not have any relation to the actual namespace. In that case,
the URI would denote a DCMI namespace (termset) and the RDF/XML
representation would be fairly accurate, and that DCMI namespace
URI would simply be used as punctuation as an XML namespace to
differentiate/uniquify the terms in the DCMI namespace.
Sheesh, what a mess...
Patrick
> Pete
>
> [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/10/26/dcmi-namespace/
>
>
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