Re: A different symbol for {|

On 04/01/2021 08:20, Miel Vander Sande wrote:
> Hi Laura,
> 
> I'm glad you bring this up... I was thinking the same thing, but I 
> refrained from asking to not complicate the consensus ;)
> However, note that the outcome of the current effort is not a 
> recommendation, so syntax can still be changed when going towards a 
> standard.
> 
> I dig the <<>> syntax, it is in line with the URI notation, but the {| 
> |} (they are next to eachother on my keyboard btw ;)) feels unintuitive 
> compared to something like <! >. The { } make me think of graphs

That is a downside, but the same argument applies to "[" and "(" for 
blank nodes and lists. [[ ]] was originally suggested but [[ is already 
legal Turtle.

Analysis:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-star/2020Aug/0043.html

and the discussion is referenced in issue 9.

> and 
> that might have been the intention. So to prevent going into this 
> uninformed (https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star/issues/9 
> <https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star/issues/9> doesn't mention the 
> notation's origins), perhaps Pierre-Antoine or someone else could 
> briefly explain the rationale. I would definitely consider this an issue 
> of low priority.

A few inputs:

1 * It should be the same syntax for SPARQL as well.
2 * It should work in Trig
3 * It should not more complex parsing technology

Turtle and SPARQL are both one token lookahead grammars, without context 
sensitivity tokenizing (LL(1) and LALR(1) and recursive descent).

> Laura, about your [1] proposal: I think this was discussed in other mail 
> threads. There's the thread by Pat Hayes and Ivan Herman talking about 
> reference by hash. Lionel Medini also proposed a |:bob :age 42 @{ 
> :source <http://example.org/~bob/ <http://example.org/~bob/>> 
> }.| syntax. Bu I believe the plan is to keep annotations and triples 
> together while staying within the triples  model.

Yes, that is the key point for annotation syntax. As it is syntactic 
sugar, you can always write with <<>>

         :alice :knows :bob .

         << :alice :knows :bob >> ex:since 1980 .

c.f. blank node labels if a triple reference style is used.

     Andy

> 
> best
> 
> 
> Op zo 3 jan. 2021 om 09:02 schreef Laura Morales <lauretas@mail.com 
> <mailto:lauretas@mail.com>>:
> 
>     Hello,
>     since the spec is still WIP and you are welcoming comments, I would
>     like to suggest to change the symbol {|
>     The main reason is that I find it very ugly and in stark contrast
>     with the simplicity and user-friendliness of Turtle. The two symbols
>     are also on the opposite sides of the keyboard and require quite
>     some effort to type (at least for ISO keebs), but this is only a
>     secondary reason; much less of an issue than the first one. I don't
>     find << >> particularly nice too, but it's completely bearable and I
>     don't really have much problems with it. But {| |} is just... too
>     much, I think.
>     I understand that the symbol must work both for Turtle and SPARQL,
>     and the list of available characters combinations is limited because
>     of this fact. So I'm not sure what a better replacement could be, if
>     a new keyword, or a different 1-char symbol, or a better 2-char
>     symbol such as {{ [[ (( -> => etc. Can << >> be reused maybe? What
>     are the use cases for using << >> as an object of another triple?
>     Maybe << >> as a subject could stand for non-assertion triples,
>     whereas << >> used as an object could stand for annotation (instead
>     of {| |}). Even a reference system like this would be better imo:
> 
>          :alice :knows :bob . [1]
>          ...other turtle ...
>          [1] ex:since 1980 .
>

Received on Monday, 4 January 2021 10:59:15 UTC