[enhancement] Add shortcut syntax from Turtle about nomnoml

[ctzurcanu]

I would also love this. A lot of economy on typing the source. Of course the source will have to be pre-processed before parsing with the present parser... I have not found a JS transpiler to achieve this...

[ctzurcanu]

the advantage of using a transpiler would be that we can keep the present way of writing the source and add a second, more terse, version - without changing the grammar.

[skanaar]

While I think this syntax is compatible, I would avoid adding more control characters to the language.
Semicolon already means linebreak when writing text inside a classifier and in the root scope. Having it mean something else when next to a classifier is probably a slippery slope towards trouble...

But the idea for a transpiler is interesting!

[ctzurcanu]

@skanaar I have already tried changing the nomnoml grammar for this and the problem was exactly where you expected: conflict between SEP and ";"
The problem with the transpiler is that we need to know the breakdown of association to re-write the source correctly.
An idea is to consider a middle ground:

[a]-[b];--[c];->[d]
can be

[a]-[b]
;--[c]
;->[d]

[a]-[b]*-[c]*-[d]
can be

[a]-[b]
*-[c]
*-[d]

and [foo]-[bar],[baz],[fighter],[bang]
can be written as

[foo]-[bar]
,[baz]
,[fighter]
,[bang]

It is still a much shorter source and changes to classnames have to be done in less places (should an update be necessary)

the changes are in association:

association
  : class IDENT class  
  | rep class   
  | oper IDENT class

also:

rep   :  ","
oper  
   : "*"
   | ";"

Also something about the SEP and IDENT, probably

[skanaar]

Closing this as additional control characters will probably cause more trouble than it is worth.