Re: [whatwg] New URL Standard from Anne van Kesteren on 2012-09-24 ([e-mail] from September 2012)

[Ian Hickson <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, Jan Algermissen wrote:
> On Oct 24, 2012, at 1:47 AM, Ian Hickson <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, Jan Algermissen wrote:
> >> 
> >> What matters is that nothing of the existing URI spec *changes*.
> >> 
> >> Can you agree on that?
> > 
> > Do you mean the actual text, or the normative meaning of the text?
> 
> I ideally mean the actual text, but it might be that there is some 
> overlap in the construction algorithms - I am not expert enough there to 
> judge that.

Well I definitely don't think we should constrain a spec editor to being 
forced to use text he didn't even write, that seems like a very poor way 
to write a spec. Especially given that here the text is already spread 
across two specs (URI and IRI).

I think it makes sense to be conservative and say that URL synatx 
conformance requirements should probably not change from what the IRI spec 
says today unless there's a really compelling reason, though.


> The point really was to make it very clear that *additional* stuff is 
> going to be said and that existing implementations that follow the URI 
> spec strictly remain conforming.

Well unless there's a very good reason (e.g. following the current specs 
involves a security vulnerability or something like that) then I'd think 
that was a reasonably strong technical requirement, sure. But that's 
independent of how the spec is written. It's trivial to write a spec that 
uses existing text while making all existing implementations 
non-conforming, for example (just add a line that says "implementations 
MUST NOT do what the following section says" or something...).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'