Re: Turtle feature request : multi-line comments (was Re: Proposed conventions: System Triplestore, turtle Command, Text Embedded Turtle)

I am satisfied with this response, provided that this feature request
gets placed on the wish list for the next version of SPARQL and Turtle.

Thanks,
David


On Mon, 2012-02-13 at 12:00 -0500, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
> The Cc'd lists have seen to requests (attached) for multi-line comments:
> 
>   1 * Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> [2012-02-03 18:37+0100]
>     > [added cc to dajobe & timbl]
>     > 
>     > One use case for multi-line (block) comments is mixing text and data
>     > notes in the same document and being easily able to separate out the
>     > two later (see earlier posts in this thread). When quickly jotting
>     > notes the # is inconvenient/ugly and block comments make convenient
>     > chunks for extraction.
>     > …
>     > Would /* and */ be more suitable (as Steve suggested) perhaps..?
> 
>   2 * David Booth <david@dbooth.org> [2012-02-08 15:09-0500]
>     > Inspired by a post from Danny Ayres
>     > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2012Feb/0031.html 
>     > and by my own need, it would be very helpful to have multi-line comments
>     > in SPARQL (and Turtle too) such as /* ... */.
> 
> Before David Booth's request, the RDF WG asked me to respond to Danny Ayers's proposal by pointing out that there's a strong desire to keep Turtle "copy/past-compatible" with SPARQL. The SPARQL Query language Last Call ended Feb 6:
>   <http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-sparql11-query-20120105/>
> 
> The demand to finish SPARQL quickly and the value of SPARQL/Turtle compatibility appear to outweigh the demand for multi-line comments. If Danny and David are satisfied with this response, please indicate so in order that both SPARQL and RDF groups may proceed.
> 
> Personal comment from ericP: The deployment of Turtle and SPARQL make many people in the WGs reluctant to add features which will break foward-compatibility (using new comments instead of the old ones will break old parsers). IMO, the best way to "break some eggs" is to convince the vendors themselves to extend their implementations with e.g. multi-line comments and then persuade the next editions of the Working Groups to document it as conventional practice.
> email message attachment
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > From: Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>
> > To: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
> > Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Dave Beckett <dave@dajobe.org>
> > Subject: Turtle feature request : multi-line comments (was Re:
> > Proposed conventions: System Triplestore, turtle Command, Text
> > Embedded Turtle)
> > Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 18:37:20 +0100
> > 
> > [added cc to dajobe & timbl]
> > 
> > One use case for multi-line (block) comments is mixing text and data
> > notes in the same document and being easily able to separate out the
> > two later (see earlier posts in this thread). When quickly jotting
> > notes the # is inconvenient/ugly and block comments make convenient
> > chunks for extraction.
> > (There's also the potential for adding any comments as annotation
> > triples at parse time, though that's almost certainly best left out of
> > scope.)
> > 
> > I'm not sure of the impact such an addition might have, I think none
> > but probably only because I've missed something obvious. Maintaining
> > validity of existing documents seems an essential requirement. I've no
> > idea of the situation with N3 - on a quick skim of [1] I couldn't see
> > references to any kind of comments, not even in the BNF.
> > 
> > Regarding specific syntax, Turtle shares the use of # for single-line
> > comments and """ for long literals with Python, and Python also
> > supports """ for comments - but this would be a modal marker, which as
> > David points out earlier in this thread can cause problems. (and I
> > also wonder why Turtle doesn't already support this style)
> > 
> > Would /* and */ be more suitable (as Steve suggested) perhaps..?
> > 
> > (Making the markers in Text Embedded Turtle non-modal basically makes
> > it Turtle with block comments, much better idea :)
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Danny.
> > 
> > [1] http://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/n3/
> > 
> email message attachment
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
> > To: public-rdf-dawg-comments@w3.org, public-rdf-comments@w3.org
> > Subject: Multi-line comments
> > Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:09:28 -0500
> > 
> > Inspired by a post from Danny Ayres
> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2012Feb/0031.html 
> > and by my own need, it would be very helpful to have multi-line comments
> > in SPARQL (and Turtle too) such as /* ... */.
> > 
> > 

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Monday, 13 February 2012 18:22:34 UTC