Re: i18n of Turtle files for xesam project?

["Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen" <mikkel kamstrup gmail com>]

2007/5/26, Wouter Bolsterlee <uws+gnome xs4all nl>:

2007-05-26 klockan 10:19 skrev Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen:
>  xesam:Audio.Composer
>       a               :field;
>       :of_type        :string;
>       :has_parent     DC:Creator;
>       :name           "Composer"@EN;
>       :name           "Komponist"@DA;
>       :description    "Audio composer".

Is there a concept of "marking a string for translation" in this syntax?
Perhaps this convention will do as a convention:

  "All strings with a @EN suffix should be translated."

Yes, that could work.

I think you should extend intltool to handle this filetype, but a better
approach might be to use one of the formats that intlool already
understands, e.g. (simple) XML.

Your example might then become something like this:

| <subject name="xesam:Audio.Composer">
|   <predicate>a</predicate>
|   <object>:field</object>
|   <predicate>:of_type</predicate>
|   <object>:string</object>
|   <predicate>:has_parent</predicate>
|   <object>DC:Creator</object>
|   <predicate>:name</predicate>
|   <_object>"Composer"</_object>
|   <predicate>:description</predicate>
|   <_object>"Audio composer"</_object>
| </subject>

...but you will have to do build-time XML processing to convert the XML data
into the correct Turtle syntax.

(Oh, and in the above example the "Audio composer" sting needs a @EN prefix
as well, right?)

If we are to use XML to serialize RDF we might as well use RDF/XML and the xml:lang attribute for translatable strings I think.

The reason we avoid RDF/XML is that it is dead ugly to look at. Turtle provides a syntax almost-.desktop like in Human readability. Your example above also illustrates the advantages of Turtle over XML pretty good (in readability-terms at least).


Cheers,
Mikkel