Summing up, we have various ideas:

* Negation via "NOT" or "!" (I agree with Julien that "!" is no really good 
solution)
* Negation using "::-" and ":=-".

Besides beauty, there are important ramifications regarding semantics. Compare 
the following:

1) NOT [[located in::<q>[[Category:Country]] [[member of::EU]]</q>]]

2) [[located in::-<q>[[Category:Country]] [[member of::EU]]</q>]]

Query (1) asks: "What is not located in a EU country?" (-> remove all things 
which are known to be in an EU country)

Query (2) asks: "What is located in something that is no EU country?" (-> 
remove all things for which no located in relation besides those to EU 
countries exists)

Each of the two cannot be expressed with the other syntax. You can 
say "[[foo::+]] NOT [[foo::bar]]" but this is not the same 
as "[[foo::-bar]]". The above example suggests that we want the "NOT" style 
of negation, and I think this is generally the case. 

The latter example also shows a downside of "NOT": it looks arkward as inner 
part of a query. For "!" one would write "[[foo::+]] ![[foo::bar]]" which 
seems clearer to me.

What about "[[foo::+]] -[[foo::bar]]"?

-- Markus


On Monday 19 March 2007 12:06, Julien Tane wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I don't think the sign '!' is a good choice... Here.. I think the
> notation should  rather be
> <ask>NOT  [[fruit::apple]]</ask>
>
>  or something of the sort... for the sake of readibility...
>
>
> J
>
> Markus Krötzsch wrote:
> > On Wednesday 14 March 2007 18:58, Rich Mintz wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I'm relatively new to this but learning quickly.
> >>
> >> Is there a way to select pages that *don't* match a condition, via an
> >> "ask" query?
> >
> > Not yet. There was a patch that enabled this function for categories, but
> > I would rather like a general implementation. What syntax should we use?
> >
> > Something like <ask>![[fruit::apple]]</ask> or <ask>![[fruit::+]]</ask>?
> > Or is this too technical? Any ideas for a better negation syntax?
> >
> > -- Markus
> >
> >> I have a page like this:
> >>
> >> == Apples ==
> >> <ask>[[fruit::apple]]</ask>
> >> == Bananas ==
> >> <ask>[[fruit::banana]]</ask>
> >> == Oranges ==
> >> <ask>[[fruit::orange]]</ask>
> >> == Neither Apple Nor Banana Nor Orange ==
> >> [what query can I put here?]
> >>
> >> What I am really looking for is pages for which "fruit" is not defined
> >> -- but I'll settle for a more complicated negative query instead.
> >>
> >> -- Rich Mintz
> >>
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-- 
Markus Krötzsch
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]        phone +49 (0)721 608 7362
www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/     fax +49 (0)721 693  717

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