Re: Dropping the redundant colon in N3

Well I guess I flunked URI 101 ... but i'm a bozo anyway so here i go...

"Sean B. Palmer" wrote:

> > define a subClass of URI and call them ProperNamespaceUri
> > all of which end with #.
>
> I note that if you use "bind" (still allowed in N3, but deprecated), it
> automatically appends a # to a namespace URI. However, I think that is a
> very bad idea, because not all namespaces end in a # (i.e. have the
> properties contained as FragID's within them). For example Dublin Core uses
> a "/", and a GET form could use an "=".

Well the equivalence between a "namespace uri" and "proper namespace uri" could
be stated in a language outside of N3.  Once we enter the N3 syntax then we
would only encounter namespaces encoded properly.

> > Also I note that your <...> construct in N3 cannot be easily nested
> inside of
> > XML .. which i take as a real drag.
>
> So do I, but you can't simply remove it because http: would be interpreted
> as a namespace alias!

Well maybe it *is* a namespace alias.  It's a namespace alias of all the
resources available through http.  This may seem bizzar (sorry I flunked URI
101) but really ... Where does it hurt?   I think we need to decide which is
more important .. (1) that our different languages of the SemWeb (XML, N3, etc)
be mixable or (2) whether we're going to be URI purists.  The important test
is, imho,  whether we can write a simple parser to handel all the languages
mixed together, and will that parser api build coherant semantics.

> There needs to be something there that says "this is
> a URI".

If we are already in N3 we know if is a uri by default because it is not a
punctuation or a literal.  Again, where does it hurt?

> From the spec., it looks as though Tim considered an apostrophe,
> and then DanC suggested <URI>. Also from the "specification":-
>
>      Actually it is cool to use inverse <. for stings >this is a string<
>      because then you end up being able to make pages which
>      look like markup and which are functions in notation3.
>
> That's quite an odd idea, don't you think?

Yes I think it's an odd idea.

Seth

Received on Wednesday, 31 January 2001 17:04:44 UTC