X3 Syntax for RDFX

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@cordance.net>]

Bill,

As I said on the call yesterday, this is great stuff. I find X3 to be highly
readable, and I'm going to start using this notation immediately when I need
to communicate RDFX in text. (BTW, for anyone who wants a primer on RDF N3
syntax, I recommend http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer). 

Afer playing with it for awhile, a few suggestions/observations:

1) Since XRIs don't allow whitespace, I think we can drop the trailing
period (I've always thought this was a little awkward in N3, since the
trailing period needs to be preceeded by whitespace anyway).

2) I also suggest we drop the parens around a predicate when it follows on
another line from the subject it describes, because the preceeding
whitespace makes it unambiguous that you are starting a new statement, and
we already have the precedent that a statement that starts with "/"
describes the current (preceeding) subject. That way you can more easily
spot the only "real" cross-references (the ones you need in the object slot
when referencing another RDFX object).

3) I like the convention of indenting X3 statements that start with /. It
makes it easy to see all the statements that describe a particular subject.

4) The /../ notation for repeating predicates is brilliant.

5) I think that we can just indicate literals with a double slash following
the predicate. This is very clean, as it corresponds to exactly the pattern
you see in RDFX tables, which is that you either have an XRI as a object or
a data literal but not both.

6) What do you think of the idea of using quotes for literals that include
white space, so simple X3 processors can process chunks of data that might
include whitespace?

All of these are illustrated in the following example:

=/$link/drummond
=drummond/$ref/=drummond.reed
	/$ref$object/+person
	/+name//"Drummond Reed"
	/+email//drummond.reed@gmail.com
	/+email+home/(/+email)
@/$link/cordance
@cordance/$link/dsr
@cordance*dsr/$ref/=drummond
	/$ref$object/person
	/+email)//drummond.reed@cordance.net
	/+email+work/(/+email)
	/+email+home/(=drummond/+email)
+/$link/email
	/../home
	/../work
	/../string
+email/$ref$object/$data+string
	/$link)/+home
	/../+work

Lastly, what's really cool about X3 is that it is exactly what I meant when
I mentioned the idea of nanoformats. As Kevin Marks had mentioned to me in
Doc Searls VRM meeting last week, the term "nanoformats" has already been
used to describe the idea of putting all the semantics in the identifier
(intended for the "id" attribute in HTML documents -- see
http://icite.net/blog/200602/nanoformats.html).

But X3 takes nanoformats to the extreme: an N3 statement can be used
anywhere you can use an identifier, including just freestanding text. For
example, now everyone can have a completely machine-readable nanoformat
email sig just by using X3. Mine follows below!

=drummond/+name/"Drummond Reed"
	/+email//drummond.reed@cordance.net
	/+phone+work//+1.206.364.0992
	/+phone+cell//+1.206.618.8530
	/+chat@skype//drummondreed

Wow!!!!

Bill, X3 is so cool I'm posting this page on the XDI TC wiki so we can
continue to document it there. See:

	http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/RdfX3Syntax 

=Drummond (who it turns out has been using a nanoformat as my signature line
for five years now!)


-----Original Message-----
From: Barnhill, William [mailto:barnhill_william@bah.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 4:48 PM
To: drummond.reed@cordance.net; xdi@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [xdi] Groups - XDI RDFX Model Proposal V1
(xdi-rdfx-model-v1.pdf) uploaded


The following are some ntoe regarding "X3" a more human readable
representation of the RDFX XDI syntax. This would not replace RDFX but
would enable easier human creation/understanding of XDI documents,
similar to N3 does for RDF.

This is a first cut at the example XDI document recently posted, in X3
syntax:
=/$link/drummond
=drummond/$ref/=drummond.reed .
	(/$ref$object)/+person .
	(/+email)//drummond.reed@gmail.com .
	(/+email+home)/(/+email)
@/$link/cordance
@cordance/$link/dsr
@cordance*dsr/$ref/=drummond .
	(/$ref$object)/person .
	(/+email)//drummond.reed@cordance.net .
	(/+email+work)/(/+email) .
	(/email+home)/(=drummond/+email)
+/$link/email .
	(/../home) . {! This is a comment. Just like (/x) means the pred
applies to curr subj, (/../) means object applied
                      to current subj and pred !}
	(/../work) .
	(/../string)
+email/$ref$object/$data+string .
	(/$link)/+home .
	(/../+work)
$/$link/ref .
	(/../link) .
	(/../object) .
	(/../data)
$ref/$link$object/$object
$ref$object/$ref$object/$object
$link/$link$object/$object
$link$object/$ref$object/$object
$data/$link$object/+string

Somewhat more readable, though I think the last set (past
+email/$ref$object/$data+string) is confusing in either form. What, in
english sentences, do the last 9 XRIs mean to the rest of you?

Best regards,
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: drummond.reed@cordance.net [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] 
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 4:19 AM
To: xdi@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [xdi] Groups - XDI RDFX Model Proposal V1
(xdi-rdfx-model-v1.pdf) uploaded

This PDF is recommended reading before our joint XRI/XDI telecon
tomorrow.
It proposes a simplified pure RDF model for  XDI documents and
dictionaries. We will go over it as agenda item #4. Word version and
additional component documents (RDFX schema, example XDI document,
powerpoint showing RDFX graph) will be uploaded next.

 -- Mr Drummond Reed

The document named XDI RDFX Model Proposal V1 (xdi-rdfx-model-v1.pdf)
has been submitted by Mr Drummond Reed to the OASIS XRI Data Interchange
(XDI) TC document repository.

Document Description:
PDF version of proposed new RDF XRI model for simplified XDI documents
and dictionaries and more robust typing.

View Document Details:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/xdi/document.php?document_i
d=22078

Download Document:  
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/xdi/download.php/22078/xdi-
rdfx-model-v1.pdf


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