Re: proposal: N-Quads as subset of TriG

Oracle uses N-Quads. 
A new name for the proposed syntax would be better. 
Some additional possibilities for names: T-Quads, Q-TriG, ... 
- Souri. 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: sandro@w3.org 
To: public-rdf-wg@w3.org 
Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2013 12:14:06 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: proposal: N-Quads as subset of TriG 


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