Re: N3 and Turtle Syntax Questions

Hi David,

On Tue, 2012-09-11 at 10:02 -0400, David Wood wrote:
> Hi David and Hugh,
> 
> 
> On Sep 11, 2012, at 08:48, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 17:59 +0100, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > Sandro has asked on the SemWeb list if there are any comments on
> > > Turtle syntax.
> > > I raised an issue (forwarded below) a few years ago, but it looks
> > > to
> > > me like the syntax is still the same.
> > > 
> > > I would like the syntax to allow comma and semicolon as a
> > > terminator
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > Lots of experience with other languages has shown that it is more
> > user/programmer friendly to allow an extra comma/semicolon at the
> > end of
> > a list than to treat it strictly as a separator.  
> 
> 
> Andy answered this authoritatively at [1], so please don't expect a
> comma.  
> 
> Regards,
> Dave
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2012Sep/0067.html
> 
I took Andy's message as merely informing us of what N3 currently
accepts.  Was it also intended as a statement of a decision by the RDF
working group?  

Even if N3 does not allow the comma this way, I still think it would be
an improvement to Turtle that should be considered and weighed against
the downside of updating parsers (which already must be updated to
accept other syntactic changes from the Turtle submission).

As others may have noticed, I tend to lean toward fixing RDF glitches
now, rather than letting them continue, as I still view RDF as being in
its relative infancy.  It will be much harder to fix these things later
when there's much larger worldwide adoption.


Thanks,


-- 
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 Tuesday, 11 September 2012 16:19:53 UTC