Typing faux-literals

In conversation this evening in #swig there was some discussion of representing types of phone number. In vCard a number can be a cell, home, or work number.

The natural way I would do this in RDF is to make three subproperties of foaf:phone. In fact, as I mentioned to Chris Murphy, the correct way to model it is to make explicit the smushed information in the vCard entry — a person doesn't have numbers, places and things have numbers* (possibly excepting mobile phones in some simplified models, which might be regarded as personal), and people are associated with those locations (and thus might be contacted at them). So really a person would be linked to their place of work, which has a number (in the contact vocabulary, perhaps), and their home, which likewise might have a landline. We observed an interesting potential solution: foaf:phone expects a tel: URI, so phone numbers are not literals. This means they can be typed — as vcard:cell and so on. This seems quite elegant, and it fits in with my way of doing things. Furthermore, it avoids having to use a bnode and rdf:value, which is rather lacking in semantics.

The same applies to any literal-like URI, like mailto:s in FOAF, ISBNs, and the like. The possibilities are endless….

Hmmm, a blog post with some value to the reader. I shouldn't make a habit of this.

* Well, there are even more thorough models, but this is a reasonably correct one! Accurately, external telephone numbers are entities, controlled by the telephone company, that are temporarily associated with some conceptual endpoint, usually associated with some point in space… or are they? Hehehe.

Posted at 2005-06-12 15:59:43 by Richard • Link to Typing faux-litera…
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Buttons I really ought to have

… but can't, because there are already too many in my sidebar.

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Maybe I should look into losing some (or them all!), but I've grown quite attached to some of them.

The cast page has seen some additions, for those who are interested.

* As an aside: the very first time I mentioned the vi editor in conversation, I was politely corrected (i.e. they pointedly used the other pronunciation) that it wasn't “vee eye”, but instead was “vie”. I've stuck with the monosyllabic variant ever since, and have grown to like it. A quick search just now, however, has revealed that I might have been right to start with, though I don't see how “visual editor” is shortened into two syllables, not one. This site reckons either pronunciation is fine, while these chaps are quite adamant. Curious. I would have thought that the Unix ideal of “shortest is best” applies to pronunciation, too….

Posted at 2005-06-12 12:13:20 by Richard • Link to Buttons I really o…
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