Re: Use of LWSP in ABNF -- consensus call

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, 15 May, 2007 12:03 -0700 Ned Freed
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> Lisa Dusseault wrote:
>> > I share your concerns about removing rules that are already
>> > in use -- that would generally be a bad thing.  However I'm
>> > interested in the consensus around whether a warning or a
>> > deprecation statement would be a good thing.
> 
>> LWSP has a valid meaning and use, and its being misapplied
>> somewhere doesn't make that meaning and usage invalid. I
>> could see a note being added. However, anything more than
>> that is totally inappropriate.
> 
> Full agreement with Tony here.

+1

ABNF is simply a tool, a grammar, and a set of definitions. I'd
almost favor a separate applicability statement that encourages
the use of some features and discourages others as appropriate
if that is really needed.  But a particular element should be
removed from the standard only if there is a case to be made
that the definition is inadequate or consistent with other parts
of the model or grammar.   If such inconsistencies actually
existed, ABNF should, IMO, be bounced back to Proposed and
fixed.  Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case here, but
I would really question what we are doing to ourselves if our
grammatical definitions start needing profiles

     john