- From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 00:13:39 -0400
- To: W3C RDF WG <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <51E22573.6060207@w3.org>
Thinking about our abundance of RDF syntaxes, I'm wondering if we can
make N-Quads be a subset of TriG. Specifically, I'd suggest each line
of an N-Quads file either be:
1. An N-Triples Line
or
2. GRAPH <iri> { an-n-triples-line }
I know this isn't compatible with old N-Quads. That's a shame. But it
would make N-Triples, N-Quads, Turtle, and TriG all just be profiles of
the same language, readable with the same parser. And that language is
closely aligned with SPARQL, being the same where one would expect it to
be. That seems like a very good thing.
It would mean the W3C Recommended RDF languages would be: RDF/XML, RDFa,
JSON-LD, and TriG (with its profiles, especially Turtle). Those are each
so obviously different, I see little possibility of confusion or need
for advice. And that's a very good thing.
Maybe we should use a different name, since it's not at all like
N-Quads. Perhaps "Line-Mode TriG" or "Primitive TriG" or "Line Quads"
or "TriG Line Dump" or "Dataset Line Dump Format". (Do we want to
rename N-Triples, too? I know 2013 N-Triples isn't exactly the same as
2004 N-Triples, so maybe a new name would be helpful? Or is it close
enough that the same name is fine. N-Triples and N-Quads are rather
obscure names.) Maybe "N-Triples with named graphs" or "Dataset
N-Triples".
I guess the problem with this would be if lots of people are using
N-Quads as is, in the open, and are totally not convinced by this
argument. If they're going to keep using non-TriG N-Quads, even if we
do this, that would be a little awkward. Is anyone reading this
potentially in this camp? Or do you know anyone who is?
If not, can we please align on one language like this?
-- Sandro
Received on Sunday, 14 July 2013 04:13:47 UTC