Re: Dropping the redundant colon in N3

Aaron Swartz wrote:

> Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com> wrote:
>
> >> 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! There needs to be something there that says "this is
> > a URI".
>
> It's more than just the issue of namespace aliases -- it's the fundamental
> fact that there's no way to pick out what a URI is.

Ok, ok ok ... stupid me .. it just dawned on me where my confusion is .. the colon
is overloaded between its use in the URI and its use in RDF to separate namespace
prefixes from words.   Here is my solution ... use square BracketPhrases.

So we have the following BracketPhrases

[ uri ]  1 element = content is expected to be a uri resource
[ predicate object ] 2 elements (standard usage in N3 now)
[ subject predicate object] 3 elements = an intensionally reified statement
designating the reification quad
[ statementUri subject predicate object ] 4 elements = a extensionally reified
statement designating a statement in the unique context of it's utterance.

Note: this might have solved some of the other nitty reification controversies while
we were at it.  But I may be talking more about SemEnglish than N3
see: http://robustai.net/mentography/semenglish.html  revised today for more
details.

> Here are some URIs
> (inside quotes):
>
> ""
> "../"
> "http://www.yahoo.com/"
> "./foaf:wednesday"
> "mid:huh@w3.org"

I suppose [] would be some kind of universal null sign; and I don't see any problems
with uri preceeded by "../" .  I would still say that uri ending in periods would
not be ProperUri to SemEnglish.

> "bob"

"bob" would just be SemEnglish bob.

> and ban URI as a namespace prefix in N3. You could also figure out some
> other sort of delimiter for URIs that didn't conflict with XML.

Yes like [ ] :)

So my signature transaction to the SemWeb would become:

<signature
       language="SemEnglish"
       fromDictionary="http://webns.net/roughterms/#"
       context="#ThisEmailTrain"
       intent="#FYI">
Seth
   properName "Seth Russell";
   foaf:mbox [mailto:seth@robustai.net];
   workingOn SemEnglish;
   workingOn [http://RobustAI.net/MyNetwork/index.html];
   workingOn [http://robustAI.net/MyNetwork/StickeyCyberMolecules.html];
   (unfortunatley should have been workingOn) SpeakToMeCatalog;
   wrote [http://robustai.net/ai/symknow.htm];
   conjectures [http://RobustAi.net/Ai/Conjecture.htm];
   affiliatedWith [http://purl.org/swag/];
   affiliatedWith [http://speaktomecatalog.com];
   lookingFor [Who:Person#x willProgram SemBrowser].
SemEnglish
   a Language, WorkInProgress;
   description "English with unambiguous (fixed) semantics";
   spec [http://robustai.net/mentography/semenglish.html];
   extends N3;
   simplifies RDF/XML;
   (can be embedded in) XML, emails, (natural language).
SpeakToMeCatalog
   slogan "Give the Gift that says something";
   URL [http://www.speaktomecatalog.com].
</signature>

Received on Wednesday, 31 January 2001 19:33:23 UTC