Re: in...of syntax Re: Turtle Last Call: Request for Review

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 10:42:48PM -0500, Pat Hayes wrote:
> 
> On Jul 16, 2012, at 3:36 PM, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> 
> > I would like to formalize the request I have made at intervals
> > to include the     is ... of syntax as in N3 in Turtle.
> > 
> > Motivations:
> > 
> > - It is convenient for human Turtle writers. 
> > 	Example:
> > 
> > 	foaf:Person is rdf:type of :Alice, :Bob, :Charlie, :David, :Elisa .
> > 
> > 	Example:
> > 
> > 	:Alice  foaf:age 38; 
> > 		g:child :Bob, :Charlie;
> > 		is  g:child of  :Edna, :Fred;
> > 		foaf:basedNear :London;
> > 		is dc:author of [ dc:title "My life"; dc:date "1999"] .
> > 
> > - It is convenient for machine turtle writers.  If you can use the
> > is ...of syntax, then you can serialize any acyclic graph of bnodes without
> > having up make up nodeids for the serialzation, just using [brackets].
> > 
> > - By allowing a predicate to be used in either direction, it decreases
> > the motivation for the antipattern define both p and inverse of p for all p.
> > In other words, of you can write   "is child of" you don't need 
> > to define a separate "parent" property. 
> 
> That is a VERY good argument for it. The others are user convenience issues, but this one can have far-reaching effects on deployed linked data. 

A massive +1. Having been burned by that in the past, it is indeed a very good argument for it. 

The argument about generating Turtle data from pre-existing hashes is also a very good one. I've written a few of these 'RDFizers' in the past, just recursively going through a hash and outputting a string that happens to be valid Turtle (see https://github.com/moustaki/bbc-serialiser for example, which is currently in use on a few BBC websites) - and having a way to write triples in both directions make that a *lot* easier...

Best,
Yves

> 
> Pat
> 
> > 
> > - Why does turtle have the ability to end a sentence with an extra ";"?
> > Because it helps when you are putting together a script to
> > convert other data into RDF.  The "is..of" syntax has the same sort
> > of value, when you are writing a converter from other data formats
> > you want to keep the same subject node in play in with syntax 
> > and output some incoming arcs as well as outgoing ones.
> > 
> > - It does not change the graph model onto which Turtle maps
> > 
> > - It has been in N3 for more than 10 years and it has been a pain
> > that it is not in Turtle.  it is illogical and difficult to
> > remember that an N3 feature which is just RDF graphs is not available
> > in Turtle.
> > 
> > Tim
> > 
> > 
> > Looking at http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/TF-Turtle
> > 
> > On 2012-07 -11, at 11:26, David Wood wrote:
> > 
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> The RDF Working Group has published:
> >> Turtle: Terse RDF Triple Language [1]
> >> as a Last Call Working Draft.
> >> 
> >> The Last Call period ends 15 September 2012. All feedback is welcome to public-rdf-comments@w3.org.
> >> 
> >> Our charter [2] calls for coordination with the following working groups.  We would therefore particularly value comments from:
> >> Semantic Web Coordination Group
> >> Internationalization Activity
> >> SPARQL Working Group
> >> RDFa Working Group
> >> Web Application Working Group
> >> XML Query Working Group
> >> 
> >> Regards,
> >> Dave
> >> 
> >> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-turtle-20120710/
> >> [2] http://www.w3.org/2011/01/rdf-wg-charter
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
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Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2012 09:36:34 UTC