

RE: A Rough Guide to Notation3

From: Danny Ayers <danny666@virgilio.it>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 15:48:18 +0200
Message-ID: <EBEPLGMHCDOJJJPCFHEFIECAHJAA.danny666@virgilio.it>

I heartily welcome Sean's piece on this, and wouldn't for a moment wish to criticise the work done by Sean, TimBL, DanC and all. However I don't think n3's origins puts it beyond criticism, so here's a little diabolical advocacy. 

There's a reasonable consensus on the ugliness of RDF/XML syntax. After all, it isn't intended for human consumption. But then neither is RDF itself. Ok, so humans will inevitably want to play with the language, but is the answer really a new syntax? There are certainly benefits in using assembly language rather than raw hexadecimal, but I don't think there would be quite as many programmers around today if it wasn't for higher level languages. Ok, so assembler acted as a staging post near Bootstrap City, but can the same apply to n3, especially in current circumstances? N3 is fine and dandy for the illuminati, those that have already noticed that RDF seen as triples or node & arc graphs is essentially reasonably simple. But a newcomer to RDF may first be put off by RDF/XML, and what do they find if they look further? - a completely new notation to learn, probably unlike anything they have seen before. Obfuscation City.

So although there may be nothing amiss with n3 in itself, might there not be a danger of it playing a negative role in the adoption of RDF?

Just a couple of centissimi.

Danny Ayers
<stuff> http://www.isacat.net </stuff>

Idea maps for the Semantic Web

>[mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Sean B. Palmer
>Sent: 22 August 2002 06:07
>To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
>Subject: A Rough Guide to Notation3
>- A Rough Guide to Notation3, 2002-08-22
>Lots of juicy FAQ-style tidbits, examples, notes about proposed and
>deprecated features, a (fairly) detailed history, and more. Comments and
>additions welcome.
>Kindest Regards,
>Sean B. Palmer
Received on Friday, 23 August 2002 09:57:15 GMT
