[rdf12-concepts] notes on 2025-01-17 RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Syntax WD

I have two sets of suggested edits based on a fresh eyes review. The 
first set is some additional bits that would clarify parts that I 
thought were confusing when I first read them. (Typically, they 
reference terms and concepts that are not explained until later in the 
document and I thought that understanding the document should not 
require people to read it twice.) The second set is simple copyediting 
suggestions.

--- clarifying the language ---

- "Figure 1 An RDF graph with two nodes (Subject and Object) and a 
triple connecting them (Predicate)" I do not understand this sense of 
the term "triple", which has always meant a subject-predicate-object 
tuple before. (Right above that it says that "triples, each [consist] of 
a subject, a predicate and an object" and 3.1 also describes it that way.)

- After "They are merely a syntactic convenience for abbreviating IRIs." 
I would add: "RDF serializations provide conventions for associating 
prefixes with IRIs."

- The discussion in "Triple Terms and Reification" would be much easier 
to follow if the following was added after the earlier sentence 
"Asserting an RDF triple says that some relationship, indicated by the 
predicate, holds between the resources denoted by the subject and 
object.": "(As we shall see below, not all triples are asserted.)"

- After reading this, "such a triple is then a reifying triple. The 
subject of that triple is called a reifier", I found the following 
confusing: "the reifier, which can be the subject or object of different 
triples." It "can be" the subject? Or it can be an object? (Maybe if 
it's the subject of a reifying triple and the object of another triple?) 
This would benefit from some clarification.

- Section 3 "An RDF triple is said to be asserted in an RDF graph if it 
is an element of the RDF graph." I thought "as opposed to what", i.e. I 
wondered what sort of triple is not an element of an RDF graph. I later 
realized that a triple term is not necessarily asserted. (Right?) After 
this sentence I would add "(A triple term is an example of an RDF triple 
that is not necessarily an element of an RDF graph and therefore not 
asserted.)" as some context.

--- simple copyediting things ---

- "RDF 1.2 Concepts introduces key concepts and terminology..." This 
sentence is punctuated like it's listing three things but it's actually 
listing two. I would remove both commas and replace the first with "and".

- "strings in a natural language, and plain-text strings" delete that 
comma. Otherwise, "and plain-text strings" looks like it's starting a 
new idea.

- "a literal with the string http://example.org/ as its" I would put 
that IRI in quotes to make it clearer that we're talking about the 
string form.

- "as follow:" -> "as follows:"

- "MAY be case normalized, (for example, by canonicalizing as defined by 
BCP 47 section 4.5)." Either remove the comma after "normalized" or 
remove the parentheses from the part after that.

- The term "case-insenstive" is used twice in the document with a hyphen 
and twice without. Because "case sensitive" has no hyphen when it is 
used I would remove those hyphens.

- "other graphs subsequently using the Skolem IRIs," -> "other graphs to 
subsequently use the Skolem IRIs,"

- "well-known IRIs; and" remove semicolon. (With a semicolon, there 
should be a complete subject verb clause after it.)

- "between the web-accessible primary resource, and some set" remove comma

Thanks,

Bob DuCharme

Received on Monday, 20 January 2025 14:52:27 UTC