RE: Moving forward with ISSUE-30 (IRI template expansion)

On 20 Aug 2014 at 14:13, Ruben Verborgh wrote:
> Hi Markus,
> 
>> Yeah. Considering we (or someone else) *might* introduce full Turtle at a
>> later point. Do we really want to have two syntaxes that look so similar,
>> yet are incompatible with each other?
> 
> We all seem to agree that we don't want full Turtle syntax,
> because then we wouldn't be able to parse parameters with a simple regex.

Right


> So whatever we'll have, it won't be Turtle.
> 
> That means that, in any case, whether or not we go with angular brackets,
> if somebody decides to support full Turtle literal syntax*,
> we end up with similar but incompatible syntaxes.

Yep. The question is how similar they will be. Or, in other words, how easy
is it to distinguish them.


> The only way to avoid this, is to use full Turtle literal syntax
ourselves.
> 
> (*even though I don't see a use case for that)
> 
>>  """Markus"""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
>>  """Markus"""^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string
> 
> Note that these mean different things anyway!
> In our template syntax, it would express the string:
>     ""Markus"" In Turtle syntax, It would express the string: Markus

Right, that was the point I was trying to make. Especially if you are used
to Turtle, it is very easy to miss the fact that the angular brackets are
missing in the second example.


> So that's yet another point where we are *not* Turtle.
> 
>> I still see that as the source of many hard-to-detect errors, bugs, and
>> incompatibilities. But if the group thinks this is the way to go, I won't
>> stand in the way.
> 
> But what's the alternative? Full Turtle literal syntax then?

Perhaps just using different delimiters?


--
Markus Lanthaler
@markuslanthaler

Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2014 12:28:45 UTC