Re: Literals as subjects in Turtle (but not in the RDF model) [was: Inverses of RDF and RDFS predicates]

Hi David,

Since you're presenting this as some sort of conspiracy between a backward WG and lazy tool makers, it's worth re-reading the responses to the community survey that W3C did to determine this WG's priorities, and that received 127 responses. Among all the proposed work item, this one got by far the most negative response:
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/1/rdf-2010/results#xg13

On 4 May 2012, at 14:13, David Booth wrote:
> BTW, this restriction is not just "silly" in an
> aesthetically-displeasing-but-harmless kind of way.  It is *harmful*

Out of 127 respondents, 14 thought that removing the restriction would benefit them or their organization, while 59 thought it would harm them or their organization.

> In fact, I think it would be helpful for the WG to put tool makers on
> notice that this restriction is likely to be removed at some point in
> the future, and they should plan accordingly.  Otherwise, we would
> forever be stuck in a circular situation similar to what Nathan pointed
> out, that we can't remove this restriction from the tools because it's
> in the RDF standard, and we can't remove it from the RDF standard
> because it's in the tools.

If this was true, then we wouldn't have any tools with Turtle support or named graphs support or with support for aggregates in queries or with JSON results in the SPARQL protocol. All of these started out as independent proposals or vendor extensions, and multiple vendors picked them up without “being put on notice” by some WG. W3C eventually followed the herd and commenced work towards making them W3C RECs.

Best,
Richard

Received on Friday, 4 May 2012 14:35:47 UTC