- From: Thomas Baker <tom@tombaker.org>
- Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 21:04:42 -0400
- To: David Wood <david@3roundstones.com>
- Cc: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>, RDF Working Group <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 11:12:23AM -0400, Dave Wood wrote: > > We could do this experiment: find a couple people who've used at least > > one formal language before, but never seen Turtle or SPARQL, and ask > > them which of these looks like a language they'd rather use: > > > > @prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>. > > @prefix : <http://example.com/Alice/personal#>. > > > > :Alice foaf:knows :Bob, :Charlie, :Dave. > > > > or > > > > prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>. > > prefix <http://example.com/Alice/personal#>. > > > > Alice foaf:knows Bob, Charlie, Dave. > > > > Does anyone doubt the second example would win overwhelmingly? > > Having taught undergrads and grad students Turtle and SPARQL, I do > think there are some didactic objections to the second form: > > 1. The barewords aren't obviously tied to anything. How is a new > student of the language supposed to understand what can and can't go > there? > > 2. The ':' serves as a useful indication that the term is to be > treated as a URI. Barewords for URI fragments don't capture that. +1 - strongly agree Tom -- Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>
Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 01:05:17 UTC