Re: Content negotiation for Turtle files

On 2/6/13 7:23 AM, William Waites wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:45:10 +0000, Richard Light <richard@light.demon.co.uk> said:
>
>      > In a web development context, JSON would probably come second
>      > for me as a practical proposition, in that it ties in nicely
>      > with widely-supported javascript utilities.
>
> If it were up to me, XML with all the pointy brackets that make my
> eyes bleed would be deprecated everywhere. Most or all modern
> programming languages have good support for JSON, the web browsers do
> natively as well, and it's much easier to work with since it mostly
> maps directly to built-in datatypes.
>
>      > To me, Turtle is symptomatic of a world in which people are
>      > still writing far too many Linked Data examples and resources by
>      > hand, and want something that is easier to hand-write than
>      > RDF/XML.  I don't really see how that fits in with the promotion
>      > of the idea of machine-processible web-based data.
>
> Kind of agree. Turtle is a relic of trying to make a machine readable
> quasi-prose representation of data, which is suitable for both
> machines and people.

I disagree for the following reasons, as already stated in an earlier 
response:

1. Linked Data isn't about the needs of programmer, solely -- it is 
about giving everyone the ability to create and share webby structured data
2. Turtle is the only RDF syntax notation that satisfies the basic needs 
or end-users and programmers.

>   But it's not general enough -- you can only use
> it to write RDF, which means you need specialised tools.

Not true!

People should be able to save the following to a local or publicly 
accessible file denoted using a file: or http: scheme URI :

# Document Start #
<> a <#Document> .
<> rdfs:label "My Document About Whatever" .
<> dcterms:created "2013-02-06"^^xsd:date .
<> dcterms:hasFormat "text/turtle" .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "Kingsley Uyi Idehen" .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/nick> "@kidehen" .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> 
<https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about> .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/weblog> 
<http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen> .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/workplaceHomepage> 
<http://www.openlinksw.com> .
<#i> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/PersonalProfileDocument> <> .

# Document End #
>   It's
> saddening because (especially with some of the N3 enhancements) it's
> quite an elegant approach.

I am elated about Turtle. You are expressing a specialized world view. 
The Web is for everyone and we should do everything in our power to 
accentuate that aspect of this powerful system, via Linked Data.

Links:

1. http://bit.ly/RJzd9S -- Why Turtle Matters .
2. http://bit.ly/Xk333m -- Simple Turtle Introduction (for end-users) .
3. http://kingsley.idehen.net/DAV/home/kidehen/Public/ -- my public 
directory which contains some of my Turtle files (basically 
demonstrating that the file create, save, and share pattern will work 
once the Read-Write aspect of the Web emerges from its nascent state) .
4. http://bit.ly/UydU9t -- Simple SPARQL integration demo based on 
Turtle data sources (which prefixes deliberately kept out of the mix for 
simplicity and clarity).
5. http://bit.ly/VaX0zx -- Turtle tutorials collection .
6. http://bit.ly/UcnEGp -- What is Data? What is a Datum? (Ontolog forum 
discussion) .


Kingsley
>
> Cheers,
> -w
>
>
>
>


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen