Re: RDFa API - adding Namespace

Noted, only called it namespaces for the sake of clarity in this mail, 
my suggestion was CurieResolver but I don't mind what the interface is 
called or how it's referenced - CurieResolver and CURIE resolution had 
made sense to me and I've tried to introduce it in such a way that 
minimal documentation / referencing will need to be made outwith the 
interface definition, a couple of lines and this topic on the mailing 
list :)

Best,

Nathan

Shane McCarron wrote:
>  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/");
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Received on Saturday, 9 October 2010 18:31:22 UTC