Re: RDF-ISSUE-89 (at-prefix): Should Turtle allow SPARQL's PREFIX like @prefix? [RDF Turtle]

On 10 May 2012, at 22:59, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>> On the other hand, someone who has to learn a completely new language 
> 
> My sense is that people moving between Turtle and SPARQL wont think of
> it as a completely new language.  Particularly if they learned SPARQL
> first, then Turtle is effectively just a subset of Turtle.   But in
> either case, I think it will often seem like one language, where SPARQL
> just involves using a bunch of extra features of the language.

Yes, I agree, and that's a good thing.

What I meant was, someone who is new to this Turtle+SPARQL won't be greatly bothered by the extra characters that they *sometimes* have to use. It's a random little WTF, but every technology has its random little WTFs.

> I suppose that depends a lot on the context.   In a SemWeb context,
> they're often learning so much other stuff --- well, things like
> httpRange-14 draw a lot more heat than @prefix, it's true.

Right — the RDF world has a couple of random giant WTFs!

> I hear that you don't think it bothers users very much (so not a big
> reason to change), but I'm not catching what you see as the reason not
> to do the change.   Just the work, or something else?

Well, change *always* has a cost. There's the obvious cost to the WG and to implementers, but there's also a cost for these new users who supposedly will benefit from the change. They will still be confronted with old data, old systems, old books, and old *people* (us!) who still use the old syntax.

And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is ugly but not broken.

Best,
Richard

Received on Thursday, 10 May 2012 22:32:17 UTC