“Prose Objects” are records organized in a “graph”. It is a form of “semantic web.” Semantic webs have a long, wide technical scope. The peculiarity of the Prose Object model can be understood as i) simplicity (in both positive and negative senses) ii) natively “source” in the sense that any composite, tagged page is rendered on the fly and iii) entirely expandable, overridable, adaptable at every stage.
The basic format of Prose Objects is articulated here https://commonaccord.wordpress.com/record-and-context/ and used throughout here – http://www.commonaccord.org/index.php?action=list&file=G/. Suggestions for development of Prose Objects are expressed here An Ecosystem of Contracts – Technical Stack.
This “Triples” article on semantic web is helpful in contrasting the various formats. https://medium.com/wallscope/understanding-linked-data-formats-rdf-xml-vs-turtle-vs-n-triples-eb931dbe9827.
The Triples article highlights a format called “Turtle”. An element in Turtle might be expressed as: dbr:Bob_Marley a foaf:Person. This is three parts, the subject, predicate and object. The dbr: and foaf: are shorthand for namespaces previously defined.
Compare with a Prose Object record, for instance http://www.commonaccord.org/index.php?action=source&file=G/Agt-NDA-CmA/Demo/Acme-Ang/0.md:
P1.=[G/U/Who/acme_incorporated.md]
P2.=[G/U/Who/andrea_ang.md]
Why.sec={P1.Handle} wishes to engage {P2.Handle} to provide consulting services, and wishes to assure that {P2.Handle} will preserve the confidentiality of {P1.Handle}'s information.
Law.=[G/U/Place/US/CA/Santa_Clara/Geo]
=[G/Agt-NDA-CmA/Form/P1-to-P2/0.md]
The “subject” for each line is the record name – G/Agt-NDA-CmA/Demo/Acme-Ang/0.md.
The predicates “P1.”, “P2.”, “Law” or “”, in each case reference another record as the subject. “Why.sec” reference a literal “{P1.Handle} wishes ….”
The current implementation treats all predicates as literals – while most semantic web solutions treat the predicates as links to other records. Treating them as literals has the advantage of simplicity of presentation and editing. It would be possible to combine these features by including a dictionary of predicates as part of a referenced record, in this case referenced from the form of agreement [G/Agt-NDA-CmA/Form/P1-to-P2/0.md].
Prose Objects can be expressed in any semantic web format. We think that there is great advantage in treating the file-based, stripped down key=[link] and key=literal formats as the canonical version. It permits easy collaboration using git/GitHub/GitLab. Files are familiar to most users, including legal experts who will contribute much of the legal materials, they are universal in computing systems, many tools are available for editing and handling.
CommonAccord 