Re: Reflection on the special telco of CSVW

On 10 Sep 2014, at 12:21 , Andy Seaborne <andy@apache.org> wrote:

> One aspect of this choice is whether a transformation of a CSV file to be published on the web so other people (other than the data publisher) run it?  Or is it the input for a toolkit to generate format X and then a file with format X is put on the web?
> 
> If transforms are published, then there is a requirement for a programming-language, template-language independent solution.  I agree this is more work.

But the point is that such programming languages already exist. Several of them. One could say that we should not define yet another one.
If a template format is defined (complex or simple), then one can also publish the templates (e.g. [1,2]).

In other words, I am not sure I understand your point in terms of deciding whether we do templating or not.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/csvw/blob/gh-pages/experiments/simple-templates-jquery/simple_test/test-json.tmpl
[2] https://github.com/w3c/csvw/blob/gh-pages/experiments/simple-templates-jquery/simple_test/test-turtle.tmpl


> 
> Assuming javascript is a possibility; while it is arguably the safest single choice, it does not work for many environments.  If you're in a lang-X programmer (e.g. R), you want to use lang-X skills.
> 
> Otherwise, if it's a tool-input and not published to be run elsewhere, it does not need this portability requirement.  A language or a basic-transform+improve style is more reasonable.  The tool space is weaker (transforms are tool specific).
> 


I do not understand. *If* we define a template language (simple or complex), it can be defined in different languages. I happened to have that done in Javascript, but it could have been done in Python without too much problems.

Ivan




> 	Andy
> 


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