Re: Dropping the redundant colon in N3

Bill de hOra wrote:

> : This is a good point.  The colons  drive most right-minded people
> : crazy, unless one is mixing languages anyway in which case
> : the prefixes help.
>
> If the concern really is typographic why not use postfixes? Put the markers at
> the end of a word. There's also lots of scope for using whitespace and newlines
> as proper delimiters, Example using a quote instead of colons:
>
>         Seth'
>                 thinksCool'  N3'
>         properName' "Seth Russell"
>         fopl:mailbox "mailbox:seth@robustai.net"
>         lookingFor'  [<who:Programmer#x wantsToProgram' SemBrowser']
>
>         N3' primerAt'  http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer.html
>
> I think that was very readable, but then I would :). More importantly it's
> machine readable.

Well, yes,  that makes it easier to read and write and we can have our key words
back.   But I still like my solution better (course i would).   Fluff key words just
give us syntactic brambles to parse around and encourage people to extend  the
language is a ways that diverges from labeled directed graphs.  That later problem
being more important than the typographic one.

Also, while we're at it, why not eliminate prefixes entirely.  Here's how ... though
I bet somebody though of it before i did.  We define the default namespace somewhere
[talkingIn="http://swag.semanticweb.org/termsplayground"] ... then require that to
be a coherent dictionary inheriting all necessary namespaces and that it contain no
conflicting antonyms (did i get the right word here?).

<signature talkingIn="http://swag.semanticweb.org/termsplayground" >
:Seth
   :properName "Seth Russell";
   foaf:mbox "mailto:seth@robustai.net";
   :workingOn <http://RobustAI.net/MyNetwork/index.html>;
   :workingOn <http://robustAI.net/MyNetwork/StickeyCyberMolecules.html>;
   :wrote <http://robustai.net/ai/symknow.htm>;
   :conjectures <http://RobustAi.net/Ai/Conjecture.htm>;
   :affiliatedWith <http://purl.org/swag/>;
   :affiliatedWith <http://speaktomecatalog.com>;
   :lookingFor [Who:Person#x :willProgram :Sembrowser].
</signature>

Received on Friday, 26 January 2001 13:26:07 UTC