[Turtle] Two formats (was: Re: Turtle, Qurtle, Super-Turtle, N-Triple, N-Quads, Trig - BC and Scope)

On 2 Mar 2011, at 19:32, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> 2.  The first, our standard version of Turtle, should be very
> conservative, inside the space of nearly all existing turtle documents
> and software.

+1

> 3.  We should have a different syntax, with a different mime-type, for
> handling [GRAPHS] in a Turtle-like language. 
> 
> If that's true, the next big issue is whether this second syntax is (as
> Ivan proposed) just Turtle plus the minimum needed to handle extra
> graphs (TriG?), or whether (since we don't have nearly as much BC to
> worry about) we should take the opportunity to add some extra stuff
> here.

Adding extra stuff? I'd actually propose the opposite: Let's throw some stuff out from the [GRAPHS] format.

At the moment, I see multi-graph formats used mainly to exchange dumps between SPARQL stores. Hence I see this as the main use case to address.

We've learned from N-Triples that line-based formats are great for exchanging dumps.

So, let's take N-Triples and add an optional 4th element to deal with [GRAPHS]. A la N-Quads [1], but being explicit about what the 4th element is. Also add some other good bits along the lines Andy suggested elsewhere (UTF-8, base URI, proper media type). And declare victory.

Best,
Richard

[1] http://sw.deri.org/2008/07/n-quads/





> 
> [the rest of your email has good stuff, but I don't have time to respond
> at the moment.]
> 
>    -- Sandro
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> If we can't change turtle, and can't do super-turtle or qurtle, why and 
>> how can we even discuss graphs of any form?
>> 
>> Syntax sugar like ^ prefix, in scope?
>> 
>> Quoted Graphs, in scope?
>>  - if yes, what to they resolve to in the RDF semantics? how would that 
>> work?
>> 
>> Graph Literals?
>>  - what's the difference between quoted graphs?
>> 
>> variables?
>> 
>> changes to the semantics?
>>  - if no, can changes like g-box be introduced without being in the 
>> semantics?
>> 
>> changes to the concepts?
>>  - if yes, what about B.C. with RDF/XML? existing deployed data and 
>> processors? how can they change but the semantics not?
>> 
>> align turtle with sparql?
>>  - if yes, how without variables, subject literals and all the other bits?
>> 
>> Sorry, I feel like we need to know what definitely cannot happen, what 
>> definitely can and what's a grey area, for this WG.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Nathan
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 

Received on Wednesday, 2 March 2011 22:14:29 UTC