Re: RDFa API - adding Namespace

  Is there some way we can NOT call this namespaces?  People will 
confuse this with XML Namespaces, which it assuredly is not.  
"Vocabulary" is the term we use most often.  In this case, what you are 
doing is defining a "Vocabulary Shortcut".  This is pure syntactic 
sugar, but I don't mind adding it if there is an audience who expects 
this sort of thing.  But please, please, please don't call it 
Namespaces.  Please.

On 10/9/2010 1:02 PM, Nathan wrote:
> Mark,
>
> I forgot to (cc you in the original mail! and) note that this 
> introduces zero dependencies on "Namespaces" in to the API and both 
> the documentation examples and your code would be free to ignore it, 
> in that people could use either style without anything breaking - 
> similarly it allows "Namespaces" to be used anywhere an IRI is 
> required (since it returns IRI) so the use-cases expand to any method 
> which accepts an IRI.
>
> Best,
>
> Nathan
>
> Nathan wrote:
>> Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>>> The way the namespaces work I think is nice,
>>>
>>> You say foaf =  $rdf.Namespace("http://....");
>>> data.add(me, foaf('name'), you);
>>>
>>> Now I'd make it "ns" rather than Namespace in the spirit of making 
>>> it all fairly compact.
>>
>> Tim, Mark, Ivan, All,
>>
>> This is a "minimal change" proposal to add tabulators Namespace 
>> functionality in to the RDFa API, together with the use-case which 
>> hopefully warrants it's inclusion.
>>
>> I propose we change the definition of DataContext setMapping to be:
>>
>> interface DataContext {
>>     CurieResolver setMapping (in DOMString prefix, in DOMString iri);
>> ...
>> };
>>
>> and add the following interface:
>>
>> [NoInterfaceObject Callback]
>> interface CurieResolver {
>>     IRI resolve (in DOMString curie);
>> };
>>
>> This has minimal impact on the RDFa API but makes it much more 
>> usable, usage is as follows:
>>
>>   var foaf = context.setMapping('foaf', 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/');
>>   foaf('name'); // returns IRI('http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name')
>>
>> To illustrate how useful this is, here are two versions of the 
>> javascript required to create the following triples:
>>
>>   :me a foaf:Person;
>>     foaf:givenname "Nathan";
>>     foaf:homepage <http://webr3.org/>;
>>     foaf:knows :bob, :sue.
>>
>> with this proposal:
>>
>>   var t1 = data.createTriple(me, rdf('type') , foaf('Person') );
>>   var t2 = data.createTriple(me, foaf('givenname') , myName );
>>   var t3 = data.createTriple(me, foaf('homepage') , myHomepage );
>>   var t4 = data.createTriple(me, foaf('knows') , thisDoc('bob') );
>>   var t5 = data.createTriple(me, foaf('knows') , thisDoc('sue') );
>>
>> without the proposal (current API usage):
>>   var t1 = data.createTriple(me, 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('rdf:type') , 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('foaf:Person') );
>>   var t2 = data.createTriple(me, 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('foaf:givenname') , myName );
>>   var t3 = data.createTriple(me, 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('foaf:homepage') , myHomepage );
>>   var t4 = data.createTriple(me, 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('foaf:knows') , 
>> data.context.resolveCurie(':bob') );
>>   var t5 = data.createTriple(me, 
>> data.context.resolveCurie('foaf:knows') , 
>> data.context.resolveCurie(':sue') );
>>
>> I sincerely hope that illustrates how beneficial this would be to 
>> add, and as a bonus it keeps the entire API type safe with no 
>> additional changes needed.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nathan
>>
>> ps: here's the snipped code which makes the above examples work 
>> (remove the `var = thisDoc` etc for the usage without this change):
>>
>>   var thisDoc = data.context.setMapping( "" , 
>> "http://webr3.org/nathan#" );
>>   var rdf = data.context.setMapping( "rdf" , 
>> "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" );
>>   var foaf = data.context.setMapping( "foaf" , 
>> "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" );
>>
>>  var me = data.context.resolveCurie(':me');
>>  var myName = data.createPlainLiteral("Nathan");
>>  var myHomepage = data.createIRI("http://webr3.org/");
>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Saturday, 9 October 2010 18:25:56 UTC