Subject: Re: [Json] Consensus call: establishing name equality

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:22:47 -0400

Paul Hoffman scripsit:

> There are four proposals for establishing name equality:

All four are unacceptable to me, by reason of the phrase "numeric
character code points", which can be read as "code points for numeric
characters", in 1-3.

If that is corrected, then 3 > 2 > 1.

-- 
Andrew Watt on Microsoft:                       John Cowan
Never in the field of human computing           [email-masked]
has so much been paid by so many                http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to so few! (pace Winston Churchill)

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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:37:51 -0400

Carsten Bormann scripsit:

> Hmm, a bit too much MUSTard for my taste.  Only the first MUST in 1
> is really needed.

Not so, and for this reason:  in 1 and 2 it says "comparisons MUST be
conducted, after all unescaping is done, by comparing" etc.  That does
not positively require that unescaping be done.  It can be read as
"comparisons MUST be conducted, after all unescaping is done (if it
is done at all)".  Only 3 positively requires unescaping to be done
before comparing.

It has been said that a standard (and this is a Standards Track RFC)
is a contract between the implementer and the user.  We ought not to
disregard the possibility that some implementers will be acting in bad
faith, trying to find whatever loopholes they can, and that some users
will be suing them for non-compliance.  Insofar as any form of words
can capture it, we should make sure that implementers MUST do what users
can properly expect them to do.

So why didn't I say that I couldn't live with 1 or 2, you may wonder?
Because I'm willing to swallow a certain amount of lack of precision in
the search for consensus.

-- 
You are a child of the universe no less         John Cowan
than the trees and all other acyclic            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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  --DeXiderata by Sean McGrath