Re: RDF 2 Wishlist: Turtle Syntax

> Hi
> 
> Sandro Hawke wrote:
> >> 2009/11/1 Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>:
> >> > So, what should W3C standardize next in the area of RDF, if anything?
> >> 
> >> Turtle syntax.
> > 
> > Yeah...  Any insights into how to handle the costs of having multiple
> > syntaxes?  Should the expectation be that all RDF consuming software
> > will handling exactly three syntaxes (RDF/XML, RDFa, and Turtle)?  I
> > guess many systems already do, and compared to the other two, parsing
> > Turtle is trivial.
> 
> If anyone was concerned about the costs of multiple syntaxes then we wouldn't
> have 3 native OWL 2 syntaxes (plus all RDF forms of it), 

Exactly one syntax for OWL is required (the RDF/XML based one).  All the
rest are optional.  I wouldn't publish them on the open web, unless I
was content-negotiating with RDF/XML as well.  But tool makers want to
use them inside systems, and in books and such.

> 2 RIF syntaxes, 

The presentation syntaxes are just for people reading the spec and test
cases.  As with OWL, there is exactly one canonical/required syntax (the
XML one).

So, yes, we still have the social cost of multiple syntaxes, but at
least systems gathering W3C-standard data off the open web don't have to
understand a zillion syntaxes.

> 2 SPARQL query results formats and possibly multiple presentations of
> the to-be- defined RDF2RDB mapping language [1].

I don't think those features increase the cost of implementing data
consumers.

> Turtle is out there and to my knowledge every important RDF library supports 
> it - and OWL API does as well. I support having it as a recommendation - not 
> only to give it the status it deserves but also to finally sort out the media
>  type problems around Turtle and N3. :-)
> And picking up work on the Turtle version of the Primer [2] again would be ni
> ce as well.

Yep, that sounds good to me as well.

> Because of GRDDL you could say that the number of RDF-interpretable formats o
> fficially supported by W3C is endless. I'm not sure which formats a conformin
> g RDF tool should be required to parse but I think RDF/XML and Turtle should 
> both be on the list.

True.   GRDDL does make things interesting.

Thanks for your input....

   -- Sandro

Received on Sunday, 1 November 2009 22:01:38 UTC