Re: Another RDF Syntax Idea

Dave Beckett <dave.beckett@bristol.ac.uk> wrote:

>>> [URIBeingDescribed] -> [price]   -> [anon1]
>>> [anon1]             -> [format]  -> "dollar"
>>> [anon1]             -> rdf:value -> "100"
>> Yes. This is what I meant. This is a rather common occurrence that is overly
>> painful to represent with the current syntax, and an easy addition.
> OK, just be aware that you are extending making the RDF/XML parsers
> more complex and that's a bad thing.  Compare to how difficult it
> was/is to get things added to HTML in browsers?  Hence XHTML.  RDF is
> a way to provide extensible semantic modelling and has an XML syntax
> (amongst others).

I agree -- I think this syntax is one of the most important to add. The
clear benefit is that now nearly all (all?) XML data formats are valid RDF.
I can't tell you how many RDF newbies have been stymied by this problem.

What? I can't use attributes.
    No, you can.
What? I can't use element content?
    No, you can.
Why can't I use both then?!

This is important, because we're going to see a lot of XML/RDF integration
in the future, and I see this issue as being one of the things holding us
up.

>>> [URIbeingDescribed] -> [rdf:_1] -> [#uri1]
>>> [URIbeingDescribed] -> [rdf:_2] -> [#uri2]
>> I'm simply speaking of the case where you're referencing a Bag or Seq from
>> another URI. Your thing is basically the same as mine, except you've
>> replaced [anon#1] with [URIbeingDescribed]. Unless you mean something else.
> I'm still unsure why you are proposing this - what does it add that
> cannot be done with the existing syntax?  It changes the container
> model or is it an alternative?

It doesn't change the contain syntax -- it's a subset of my later container
proposal. Here's the idea:

Often, lists exist in XML, and these are not declared specifically as an RDF
container. I want a way to teach RDF parsers to interpret these as a list.

There are two possibilites:

    1) Use an attribute (parseType) to inform the parser.
    2) Use the list notation (_1, _2, _3...) when there is no specific arc
label.

> If the context is known, i.e. you know it is RDF, then you can skip
> to grammar production obj*:

OK, but do parsers do this?

-- 
Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>| ...schoolyard subversion...
  <http://www.aaronsw.com>   |  because school harms kids
AIM: JediOfPi | ICQ: 33158237|  http://aaronsw.com/school/

Received on Tuesday, 13 February 2001 13:59:09 UTC