RE: Comments on history system descriptive note

Kevin. Mark,

An advantage of N3 is that it can be read into systems: our examples are
processable.  You can convert them to your preferred format if you want to.

All these syntaxes are just different ways of writing the edge list of the
graph down.  Visual picture of graphs can be useful too but they don't scale
and they don't do well in text emails.  N3 does have a clear(er) syntax and
can be used in a frame-like way.  Personally, I don't find that N-triples
scale any better than images of graphs.

> but depending on the reader to collapse nodes with identical URL's

I don't understand this.  You can't have two nodes with the same URIs in an
RDF graph.

	Andy


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Smathers [mailto:ks@micky.hpl.hp.com] 
Sent: 8 May 2003 15:44
To: Butler, Mark
Cc: (www-rdf-dspace@w3.org)
Subject: Re: Comments on history system descriptive note



On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 11:26:17AM +0100, Butler, Mark wrote:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Examples
> 
> So my suggestion here would be perhaps SIMILE as a project should adopt N3
> rather than RDF/XML for documentation. However this means everyone needs
to
> invest a small amount of time understanding it. However I think we are
> better using N3 rather than graphs as once you start to deal with anything
> complicated, it's impossible to make printed versions of RDF graphs
> readable.  
> 

Really?  I haven't experienced any problems using graphs to represent
graphs.  What kinds of problems have you experienced that are easier
to understand as N3 than as graphs.

I consider the graph of an RDF document to be analogous to UML for a
class inheritance diagram.  It isn't impossible to navigate the text
version, but it is much easier to understand the UML.  Even the link
'http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Examples' uses graphs to explain N3.

A browseable N3 representation might approach the usability of plain
graphs, but depending on the reader to collapse nodes with identical
URL's makes it difficult for me to read either XML or N3 notation.

Cheers,
-kls

-- 
========================================================
   Kevin Smathers                kevin.smathers@hp.com    
   Hewlett-Packard               kevin@ank.com            
   Palo Alto Research Lab                                 
   1501 Page Mill Rd.            650-857-4477 work        
   M/S 1135                      650-852-8186 fax         
   Palo Alto, CA 94304           510-247-1031 home        
========================================================
use "Standard::Disclaimer";
carp("This message was printed on 100% recycled bits.");

Received on Friday, 9 May 2003 09:46:50 UTC