- From: Peter Ansell <ansell.peter@gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:59:25 +1000
- To: "Eric Prud'hommeaux" <eric@w3.org>
- Cc: David Robillard <d@drobilla.net>, Gregory Williams <greg@evilfunhouse.com>, David Wood <david@3roundstones.com>, public-rdf-comments@w3.org
- Message-ID: <CAGYFOCQKfygwogHQj_b7=nW1CrxM4aq5XUdgJg4nx4uaUSKZFw@mail.gmail.com>
On 28 April 2013 07:25, Eric Prud'hommeaux <eric@w3.org> wrote: > * David Robillard <d@drobilla.net> [2013-04-27 14:25-0400] > > On Thu, 2013-04-25 at 17:23 +0800, Gregory Williams wrote: > > > Dave, > > > > > > Another follow-up on this issue: > > > > > > On Apr 17, 2013, at 10:22 PM, David Wood <david@3roundstones.com> > wrote: > > > > > > > There is a note in ISSUE-1 that shows that the SPARQL 1.1 syntax was > "practically frozen" by the time the RDF working group was established (23 > Feb 2011, 16:28:05). Unfortunately for Turtle syntax, we had very little > ability to change SPARQL. > > > > > > > > There is also a note that the working group resolved that SPARQL and > Turtle syntax should be "the same except for well-motivated (and small) > exceptions." (resolved at 13 Oct 2011, 17:24:43 UTC) > > > > > > > > Both of those notes suggest @prefix and PREFIX syntax alignment. > > > > > > The early discussion of ISSUE-1 seems to be only about the > triple(-pattern) syntaxes of Turtle and SPARQL. In fact, Richard Cyganiak > brought this up explicitly by saying "The resolution wast that the *triple > pattern syntax* should be the same … This shouldn't be understood to > include BASE and PREFIX, I think" [1]. Which got agreement from at least > Sandro[2]. At some point people started discussing PREFIX and BASE again, > but it's not clear to me that any resolution of ISSUE-1 or its motivation > that triple-pattern syntaxes be aligned should have bearing on this issue. > > > > > > I certainly don't think that arguing that the WG resolution to align > the triple pattern syntaxes should outweigh what is, in my opinion, a valid > technical and usability argument against having two separate syntaxes for > PREFIX and BASE. Especially when there wasn't exactly overwhelming support > for adding this to the spec to begin with. Looking at the 16 May 2012 > minutes[3], I see 11 of 17 abstaining (0) votes, 3 votes for (with an > additional +0.2) and 2 votes against (-0.999 and -0.7). (I'm not going to > try to parse the difference between people's using signed zeros.) > > > > Exactly. There are certainly things about the triple syntax I don't > > like at all (path query idiocy), but aligning those is a reasonable > > thing to do and I support it despite the ugliness. That is "aligning": > > making the two very similar things equivalent. > > > > However adding new redundant directive syntax isn't; there is no > > existing practice this breakage fixes, and it should be pretty obvious > > that having redundant and inconsistent forms for the same thing in a > > language is not so great. There is no alignment because the old forms > > aren't going anywhere, there is only cruft - cruft which implementations > > clearly should not be writing in any case. > > > > The W3C bureaucratic process is being confused with reality too much > > here. Turtle is an established language that has been around for many > > years; the SPARQL WG happening to finish first (not giving a damn about > > Turtle in the process) does not change that. > > > > It seems there is nowhere near enough support for making such a change > > to Turtle which, like it or not, has had an established single form for > > directives for years. > > There is another viewpoint that you should be aware of. The "@prefix" > syntax is derivative of the generalized @keyword syntax in N3 but > Turtle doesn't use the feature at all. If we don't make some > sacrifices to encourage compatibility, we stand to frustrate potential > new users with what appears to them to be pointless syntactic > differences. I expect we all hope that future RDF users will > outnumber existing ones. > > I am sorry, but I completely disagree that changing a fundamental part of an established syntax as part of its long-delayed "standardisation" process can be rationalised by saying that hypothetical future users will appreciate it and it doesn't matter what a community of current users think. Peter
Received on Saturday, 27 April 2013 23:59:52 UTC