Re: [Gen-art] Genart last call review of draft-ietf-httpapi-link-template-02

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Hi Christer,

> On 24 May 2023, at 6:52 pm, Christer Holmberg <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Mark,
> 
>> The quotes in my examples weren't part of the value -- sorry for the
>> confusion.
>> 
>> The point is that SF is being retrofit here -- parameters are defined by
>> applications that may not be aware that they're being used in a context that
>> leverages SF, so we can't assume they'll follow SF syntactic rules.
> 
> Perhaps it would be useful to add a Note about that? Because, now the text 
> only says that parameter values must be String, without any justification.

Documenting justification for technical decisions is a very slippery slope; doing so in every instance can quickly make specifications unusable as a practical matter. I don't see a strong reason to do so here, because it "just works."

> Now, making the above assumption that an application is "sf-unaware", isn't 
> there a risk that the parameter NAMES will cause problems?

Yes - but they should be fairly rare, as it's very common practice to use names that are compatible with SF tokens. That said, it's worth a note. I've reworked this section a bit and added a warning that some names won't serialise; see:
  https://ietf-wg-httpapi.github.io/link-template/draft-ietf-httpapi-link-template.html#name-the-link-template-header-fi

Cheers,


--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/