W3C

– DRAFT –
Data Shapes WG

25 August 2025

Attendees

Present
ajnelson-nist, AndyS, Carine, DavidHabgood, edmond, elianaP, fsasaki, HolgerK, mgberg, Robert, simonstey, SimonW, TallTed, YoucTagh
Regrets
-
Chair
elianaP
Scribe
ajnelson-nist

Meeting minutes

One additional point added to agenda from AndyS.

Subgroup reports

Profiling subgroup

nicholascar: Nothing added to profiles in the last week.

SHACL UI

edmond: Had first meeting. Went over features in specs that we want to align with in SHACL UI.
… Topics have been written up in GitHub issue, will go over in tomorrow's meeting.
… Task force created, meeting now in W3C calendar.

elianaP: Does Profiling group have meeting this week?

nicholascar: Yes, same Zoom link as regular meeting, but at Thursday, this time.

SHACL Rules

AndyS: First meeting tomorrow.
… Task force established per W3C process.
… Meeting agenda should be on everyone's calendar.

SHACL Compact Syntax

elianaP: no Vladimir or Jesse today
… Unsure if there's a meeting for that this week.

Standardized document elements

nicholascar: I said I'd get the document listings so there'd be a consistent include mechanism. Written statically at the moment. PR noted in agenda.
… We can look for other standardized pieces of documents.
… Review needed, from elianaP or ajnelson-nist.

What's new section

nicholascar: Required for horizontal review process.
… Written up Holger's LinkedIn post.
… The What's New WILL shift a bit as the documents evolve.
… Editors need to keep an eye on this What's New text so it evolves in line.
… This will probably be the most summarized form of our deliverables.
… PR is ready for everyone to look at.
… Request - we should get this out of Review and into an an initial draft so editors can incrementally revise.

elianaP: Requirements for Explainer should be checked.

nicholascar: This seems close already to the Explainer requirements.

<TallTed> AndyS, elianaP, caribou -- some more work will be needed on the TF subgrounds (such has how to join). note there are 2 here -- https://www.w3.org/groups/tf/?search=shacl -- but there's also https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/be6795a3-ddea-4b65-97e4-e58efa13f0c4/

AndyS: Stepping back to task forces,
… updates on Compact Syntax?

nicholascar: There are two editors at the moment.

AndyS: No additional contributors until until there's a document.

elianaP: Will send an ask to them to confirm their timelines.

SHACL-C vs. SHACL-CS

elianaP: Assuming this is about the abbreviation of SHACL Compact Syntax.

nicholascar: Eliana, can you also ask the editors their opinion?

<TallTed> more re TF -- `SHACL Rules` and `SHACL UI` are in my calendar

ajnelson-nist: Suggestion for looking to prefixes for if we'd want cs vs. c.

TallTed: There was some use in issues pre-existing the group that went either way.

( elianaP, TallTed, nicholascar, ajnelson-nist seem to lean towards "cs")

<AndyS> The file extensions are ".shc" and ".shaclc"

Call for consensus

caribou: Will look into resolving Call for Consensus on documents' early publishing.

Blocking PRs on editorial issues

<HolgerK> https://github.com/w3c/data-shapes/pull/509#discussion_r2289027948

HolgerK: There was some controversy on some issues about editorial issues holding PRs.
… Should these editorial changes be treated as blocking?
… If there are strong feelings about layout of source code, they should be done in a later pass.
… This is a blocker on some personal workflows.

TallTed: When I'm reviewing a PR, I put in suggested changes, some purely editorial, some not.
… I shoot for better comprehensibility, for consumers outside of this group.
… It is perfectly reasonable and acceptable to make new issues about requested changes.

HolgerK: In the case where it's about sentences, I've just accepted them.
… Once properties get added with different word-length, lines outside of that one line need to shift in order to remain aligning.
… But this blocks a PR.

TallTed: In any Suggestion, there is a 3-dot menu at the upper right of every Suggestion, which can export the change to a new Issue.

HolgerK: When others make suggestions, they are not blocking.

TallTed: But comments disappear into GitHub.

HolgerK: I do handle both the same way.

… Request - please make comments before requesting changes.

TallTed: Comments are less-accountable than Requested Changes.
… Someone who files a Comment neds to go back to see how each individual Comment was handled.

caribou: When an Issue is made, that's just editorial, the editors are trusted to handle it well.
… The theory is stronger-consideration issues would go to the discussion group.

elianaP: Are there other options for this? Such as filing Issues proactively?

TallTed: Editorial often means "Does not change normativity."
… The job of the Editor is not to serve as a magazine editor. It is to serve as the implementor of the working-group's discussions on how things should be done.
… Timing of deployment of these decisions is left to the editor. Time crunch at the end is an option.
… Turtle does not have as much prettifying support in scripting for these documents. So, we're at manual implementation for these style matters.

nicholascar: I think I agree much with TallTed's workflow here. Most of TallTed's comments on a recent PR were actionable, I resolved them. Some weren't, but in at least one case, I postponed one to an Issue, and marked the comment Resolved, delegated to separate Issue.

<TallTed> (and things that take a bit of time now should not be problematic now when we have flexible timing, vs things that take a bit of time at the end of process when we're under the gun)

HolgerK: Ok, I can try working like this. Will make a separate ticket for tabbing property values.

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/bah. slow bots!//

Succeeded: s/creatd/created/

Succeeded: s/But they're not editors yet/No additional contributors until/

Maybe present: caribou, nicholascar

All speakers: ajnelson-nist, AndyS, caribou, edmond, elianaP, HolgerK, nicholascar, TallTed

Active on IRC: ajnelson-nist, AndyS, caribou, DavidHabgood, edmond, elianaP, fsasaki, HolgerK, mgberg, nicholascar, Robert, simonstey, SimonW, TallTed, YoucTagh