Re: Reified triple syntax

Hi Thomas

> On Oct 3, 2024, at 7:28 AM, Thomas Lörtsch <tl@rat.io> wrote:
> 
>> On 28. Sep 2024, at 14:58, William Van Woensel <william.vanwoensel@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> FWIW, my personal view - the unified pipe syntax indeed looks a bit confusing in large examples. Which part is the identifier, and which is the annotation?  IMO it is better to have a dedicated symbol for particular purposes, such as the ~ for reifier terms. 
>> 
>> When used individually, my issue with the pipe operator is its "baggage" -  it is known and used for a different purpose. But, I think Thomas makes a good point with [ ] being used for adding details, such as an editor's note; and that { } should be reserved for graphs. 
>> 
>> Instead of the "|" symbol, perhaps adding a "?" (i.e., [? xyz ?]) could be more suitable. To me, the symbol conveys something like "what more can be said about this statement? well...". E.g., 
>> 
>> ex:Ioannes_68 a crm:E21_Person ,
>>       ex:Gender_Eunuch ~ ex:Gender_Assignment_Eunuch [? a crm:E17_Type_Assignment ;
>>               crm:P14_carried_out_by ex:Paphlagonian_family ;
>>               rdfs:label "Castration gender assignment" ?] ;
>>   rdfs:label "John the Orphanotrophos" .
>> 
>> I don't think it would clash with the Turtle grammar, but, it could clash with the N3 variable syntax (well, not if we require a whitespace after the "?"). On a related note, the potential "baggage" of this symbol is its association with variables.
> 
> I agree with the concerns w.r.t. the pipe symbol, but also w.r.t. the question mark which IMO rather rule it out.

Not to be argumentative :-) But the fact that a symbol is already in use in RDF / SPARQL does not seem to have been a deciding factor: the << >> syntax re-uses the symbol for the foundational < > syntax for IRIs; and the {| |} syntax re-uses the { } for query WHERE's and named graphs, as well as the "pipe" operator (which is also used as a logical-or in property paths). 

But, it is true that some symbols may have more "baggage" than others, such as the question mark.


W

> I did some more experiments, and kinda liked the ¡! combination, see the UCR example [0], with <¡ … !>, [¡ … !] and ¡! as reifier prefix (and, not shown {¡ … !}, etc. [1]).
> 
>>> There has been long discussions about the current syntax in github issues. No one will be happy about everything in syntax discussions.
>> 
>> Sorry to be adding to it. This option may have already come up; if so, feel free to disregard.
> 
> No worries! My comment was not meant to discourage discusion, but expectations ;-)
> 
> Another question: is Github issue #51 [2] the right place to continue this discussion, altough the pull request has been merged? Or is there another more current Github page discussing syntax?
> 
> Best,
> Thomas
> 
> 
> [0] https://gist.github.com/rat10/cdf3ba60978fcdac7763d88f2ee068a2
> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-star-wg/2024Sep/0073.html
> [2] https://github.com/w3c/rdf-turtle/pull/51
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> W
>> 
>>> On Sep 27, 2024, at 3:43 PM, Thomas Lörtsch <tl@rat.io> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Niklas,
>>> 
>>> thank you for the links! I agree that these are indeed large examples, and thank you for the effort. Still, and I know that I do sound like a measly know-all when I say this, they are still very few ;-) But it’s unreasonable to expect us to get much further with example data (and if we did, it would still not be sure that we could evaluate them properly). Syntax is in a lot of ways a matter of taste and intuition. IMO it’s important to try to stick to some principles and seemingly objective criteria, however without getting hung up on those too much ;-)
>>> 
>>>> On 23. Sep 2024, at 17:00, Niklas Lindström <lindstream@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Yes, I tried out syntax variants on the UCR examples, plus a larger
>>>> example based on the full Wikidata description about Elizabet Taylor
>>>> (complete with nominations, awards, spouses and nationalities (e.g.
>>>> twice a US citizen)). For illustration, I just added a new gist with
>>>> those updated to the new syntax:
>>>> 
>>>> https://gist.github.com/niklasl/c0ba767efe4816a515ad04a4db48b3e6
>>> 
>>> Very nice! I just converted them to my proposal from [7]:
>>> Liz: https://gist.github.com/rat10/ddfd60afb42a8062fd7f1680ebedd022
>>> UCR: https://gist.github.com/rat10/6c66e360c36b7d81bb3b9bc21fc16b96
>>> 
>>> The good news is: this is relatively easy to do :)
>>> 
>>> The bad news is: this reads not particularily well. In the current version (i.e. in yout gist linked above) annotation syntax seem visually better discernible from standard triples. The cost however, especially that it uses curly braces which should be reserved to graphs, is IMO too high. Seems to me like more thinking and tinkering is needed… 
>>> 
>>> However, the difference is more pronounced in the Elizabeth Taylor example which is also in the current syntax too involved to be really readable, especially because of those excrutiatingly long identifiers. Some line breaks would certainly help but I couldn’t figure out how to introduce them automatically in a sufficiently nice way (i.e. with proper indentation). 
>>> 
>>>> (One caveat is the last UCR example using a full list in a triple
>>>> occurrence; also mentioned in [1].)
>>> 
>>> Uff. I’ll comment on that in the issue itself.
>>> 
>>>> (The now obsolete examples I linked to from the comments on either the
>>>> original github issue [2] or the addressing PR [3] are at [4] and [5}.
>>>> Of note in [2] is that pipe collided with SPARQL alternativePath in
>>>> annotations; which this change fixed.)
>>> 
>>> I just read through [3] again and noticed a comment by Andy saying that "If we go postfix, then '~' vs '|' is pure choice" [6]. If that is indeed correct (I guess it hasn’t been tested thoroughly as the discussion from that point on favored the tilde) then it’s good to know. Aesthetically I find the tilde quite okay. However, I also have that urge to unify the syntactic variations, as outlined in [7], and in that respect the pipe seems better.
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Thomas
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Niklas
>>>> 
>>>> [1]: <https://github.com/w3c/rdf-turtle/issues/71#issuecomment-2363703036>
>>>> [2]: <https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star-wg/issues/116>
>>>> [3]: <https://github.com/w3c/rdf-turtle/pull/51>
>>>> [4]: <https://gist.github.com/niklasl/c23925f831950506fde4eb73885319cd>
>>>> [5]: <https://gist.github.com/niklasl/1845c6bc8b37402cc9698720c2e22f88>
>>> [6] https://github.com/w3c/rdf-turtle/pull/51#issuecomment-2256850306
>>> [7] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-star-wg/2024Sep/0073.html
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Sep 20, 2024 at 12:37 PM Andy Seaborne <andy@apache.org> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 20/09/2024 09:46, Thomas Lörtsch wrote:
>>>>>> this is one of your typical "arguments": seems to look so wise, but is so vacuous all the same. if you think you know something that can only be seen in large examples, then show it or at least describe it in some detail. don't expect everybody to just believe in your wisdom
>>>>> 
>>>>> There have been examples done by Niklas on the visual impact of syntax
>>>>> designs.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>

Received on Thursday, 3 October 2024 12:43:30 UTC