Next step (Was: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-unicode-escapes-00.txt

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

Hi.

I've gotten a very large amount of mail about this draft,
actually more addressed to me personally than on the list.

The mail seems to me to fall into three categories:

(1) Evidence that I still cannot do ABNF properly, plus a few
other editorial issues.  The most important of the ABNF issues
is that "u" and "U" cannot be specified as different without
escaping both into their character code positions (since
character-literals in ABNF are case-insensitive).  The person
who pointed that out suggested that this is yet more evidence
that \u and \U are a bad choice, but that question is part of
(3).  All of these editorial and ABNF problems are easily fixed.

(2) Concerns about "escaping the escape", with some differences
in opinion about what the escape-escape should be.

(3) Distaste for the particular \uNNNN and \UNNNNNNNN mechanisms
chosen, with several different preferences for what should be
chosen instead.

I have seen nothing that expresses a strong preference for the
"encode UTF-8 octets" forms instead of the "represent Unicode
code points" forms.  The preference for the latter was the mail
purpose of this document/ effort, so we are making progress.

Let's assume that the issues in (1) and (2) can be fairly easily
addressed, (1) more easily than (2), obviously.    If it is
helpful, I can immediately issue a new draft to correct the
editorial and ABNF issues that have been identified, clearing up
(1). 

But I'd like to focus on (3), which is where the showstoppers
presumably lie.  

I don't see how to get agreement on a single form: almost
everyone who doesn't like \u / \U likes something different...
there is no evidence in the notes I have received that indicates
one uniform strong preference in the community as to what the
syntax should be. One possibility is that I can revise the
document to indicate that there are many syntax possibilities
and that decisions should be made on a protocol-by-protocol
basis, being sure to note how to escape the escape for whatever
is chosen.    Or someone can suggest a way for us to make a
choice.

Thoughts?

      john