Re: N3 and Turtle Syntax Questions

Hi David,

On Sep 11, 2012, at 12:19, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:

> Hi David,
> 
> On Tue, 2012-09-11 at 10:02 -0400, David Wood wrote:
>> Hi David and Hugh,
>> 
>> 
>> On Sep 11, 2012, at 08:48, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 17:59 +0100, Hugh Glaser wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> Sandro has asked on the SemWeb list if there are any comments on
>>>> Turtle syntax.
>>>> I raised an issue (forwarded below) a few years ago, but it looks
>>>> to
>>>> me like the syntax is still the same.
>>>> 
>>>> I would like the syntax to allow comma and semicolon as a
>>>> terminator
>>> 
>>> +1
>>> 
>>> Lots of experience with other languages has shown that it is more
>>> user/programmer friendly to allow an extra comma/semicolon at the
>>> end of
>>> a list than to treat it strictly as a separator.  
>> 
>> 
>> Andy answered this authoritatively at [1], so please don't expect a
>> comma.  
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Dave
>> 
>> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2012Sep/0067.html
>> 
> I took Andy's message as merely informing us of what N3 currently
> accepts.  Was it also intended as a statement of a decision by the RDF
> working group?  
> 
> Even if N3 does not allow the comma this way, I still think it would be
> an improvement to Turtle that should be considered and weighed against
> the downside of updating parsers (which already must be updated to
> accept other syntactic changes from the Turtle submission).

No, it was not a decision, but we are likely to leave it up to the editors unless there is substantial discussion in the group.  I doubt the group will lean toward supporting a comma since it is not supported in N3.  Semicolons look easier.  I suppose we could add pipes or Unicode snowmen, but how many terminators do we really need?

> 
> As others may have noticed, I tend to lean toward fixing RDF glitches
> now, rather than letting them continue, as I still view RDF as being in
> its relative infancy.  It will be much harder to fix these things later
> when there's much larger worldwide adoption.

I agree, as far as that goes, but I don't consider a desire for additional syntactic sugar necessarily broken.  Semicolons without commas sound like a nice middle ground.

Regards,
Dave

> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> -- 
> David Booth, Ph.D.
> http://dbooth.org/
> 
> Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
> reflect those of his employer.
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2012 23:02:11 UTC