During Wiki Techstorm 2019 [1], we started exploring simplification for creating shape expressions. One possibility that was explored was to make something like QuickStatements that will take CSV/tabular format as input to generate shape expressions.

ShExStatements is now released: https://github.com/johnsamuelwrites/ShExStatements

The main goal is to help newcomers write shape expressions. The users write a CSV file and ShExStatements will translate it to a shex file.

Take for example, a CSV file concerning a language (with prefixes): https://github.com/johnsamuelwrites/ShExStatements/blob/master/examples/language.csv is translated to a shape expression [2].

There are five columns. Column 1 is used for specifying the node name, 2 for specifying the property value, 3 for one or possible values, 4 is for cardinality (+,*) and column 5 for comments.

Columns 3,4 and 5 are empty for prefixes. Columns 1, 2, 3 are mandatory. Column 3 can be . (to say any value).

Examples related to Wikidata that were used to create some entity Schemas E177, E178, E179 can be found here [3], with some additional examples in [4].