Re: RDF Lists

On 05/04/2012 03:47 AM, Andy Seaborne wrote:
> On 04/05/12 05:11, Manu Sporny wrote:
>> In summary - RDF Lists are difficult to implement, even for people
>> that know quite a bit about RDF. They are fantastically difficult
>> to grasp for Web developers. They are really hard to author in many
>> of the RDF syntaxes.
>
> but not Turtle :-) and your other messages suggests Turtle
> everywhere.

Yes, TURTLE got it right. :)

>> I'd like to propose something that the group should seriously
>> consider:
>>
>> 1. Add lists as a first-class citizen for all RDF serializations -
>> deprecate all serializations that don't support lists as
>> first-class citizens.
>
> This is the only complete solution -- anything that encodes in
> triples means that the triples view will show through to developers.

Yes, to be more precise, an object can  now be:

* a plain literal (with optional language)
* a typed literal
* an IRI
* a list (with optional type)

> But IMHO making these changes as part of an incremental update of RDF
> is not a good idea. RDF 2.0, or more realistically as part of a
> planned migration from where we are today to where we want to be.
> Simply replacing one approach with another one without looking at the
> deployed base of software and published data is not a planned
> migration.

I agree - just getting this very strong desire for change into the minds
of this group.

>> 2. Get rid of the the Seq, Bag and List classes - replace with two
>> datatypes - rdf:ordered and rdf:unordered. All "lists" in RDF are
>> ordered by default.
>
> Personally, I don't see the need to have unordered as well. This
> overlaps with the property definition of the property pointing to the
>  list value.

An important detail that can be discussed after there is broad agreement
that lists need to be first class citizens in RDF.

>> So, N-Triples and N-Quads could look something like this:
>
> Yes, NT and NQ will need list syntax.

In my follow-up post, I fold NT into NQ, and NQ into TURTLE Lite. There
is only TURTLE Lite, and it supports the current list syntax (or a
modified list syntax).

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: PaySwarm Website for Developers Launched
http://digitalbazaar.com/2012/02/22/new-payswarm-alpha/

Received on Friday, 4 May 2012 14:09:24 UTC