Re: Turtle language & version indicator?

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 18:33 -0500, David Booth wrote:
> I am wondering if turtle should have an optional language indicator, to
> be self-identifying -- perhaps something like the following line at the
> beginning of a turtle document:
> 
>   #! turtle
> 
> or maybe with an optional version number:
> 
>   #! turtle 1.0
> 
> I wouldn't want this to be required, but it could be helpful to have
> one, particularly if the turtle standard (1.0?) differs from earlier
> versions.  Also because it is so similar to N3.  Ditto for N-triples.

Seconded.  Lots of value and no harm in a standard recommendation for
this, since it's just a comment anyway.

As a solution to the same problem, Scheme dialects and Racket adopted
#lang, e.g. 

#lang racket
#lang r5rs
#lang turtle

I suggest using this; we have to choose something and might as well copy
an existing practice if a suitable one exists.  The intention is clear,
and it fortuitously matches our comment character.  It also means Turtle
files could be native source files directly included in such systems,
which would be nice.

#! is very loaded, I don't think we want to imply Turtle files are
executable by the shell (do we?)

One could argue "@lang <uri> ." would be more Turtley, but that would
break old implementations.

-dr

Received on Saturday, 25 February 2012 21:39:11 UTC