2012/8/17 Gregor Hagedorn g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com:
Monotext is irreplaceable, though, and it means a simple string without a language designation. Something like "Chemical symbol", I guess, would be a monotext, or ISO 3166 code. A intermediary item could not do the job in that case.
I think this would be xsd:String in the wikidata model (which has 3 String types). Monotext was defined to be with language designation. (Note: I have not fully understood the use cases for Monotext, see comment on wiki, perhaps they can be elaborated on the data model page and contrasted with language-neutral/zxx String and multilingual text).
You are right, I mixed them up (that comes from not checking).
The usecase for monolingual text are a bit rare, and I am thinking of things like official motto (which is usually not translated), etymological annotations, or the official name of a company (also, usually not translated), the species name maybe? We have to think carefully about how delineate them from each other in the entry forms, or otherwise it might end up a bit messy.
I hope it is a bit clearer. I think that there are usecases for all three text types (monotext, multitext, string) and that a unification of some of them do not make sense. As usual, I might be wrong :)
Cheers, Denny