Re: [Json] Using a non-whitespace separator (Re: Working Group Last Call on draft-ietf-json-text-sequence)

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

<no hat>

On Jun 1, 2014, at 3:35 PM, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 12:08 AM, Tim Bray <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Currently my thinking is that for backwards compatibility reasons I'd
>>> want to to make this RECOMMENDED though, not REQUIRED, except for
>>> cases where incomplete writes are a potential problem.
>> 
>> No. There should be only one way to do things.
> 
> I'm not terribly fond of this.
> 
> It'd be easier if we picked a Unicode whitespace character that's not
> used in the JSON whitespace rule and must be escaped in strings,
> preferably one that terminals and such generally handle as a
> whitespace.  

What would a whitespace character be "easier" than a character not allowed in Unicode? It seems to me that a character that could not exist in a string and therefore never needs to be escaped is "easier".

> Failing that a character that terminals will ignore.

I suspect most terminals would ignore FEFF. But I don't think that's actually as important as the fact that it doesn't require escaping.

> But since the problem we're talking about is only relevant to log-like
> writing patterns, I'd prefer to make this optional for writers,
> mandatory for readers.

Make what optional for writers and mandatory for readers?

--Paul Hoffman