[Json] Counterproposal #2 on work items

Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> Wed, 20 February 2013 18:01 UTC

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From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
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Subject: [Json] Counterproposal #2 on work items
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JSON is finished and well-defined, and we have an immense amount of running
code in place as testimony.  Perhaps, though it would be worthwhile to do
an analogue of RFC3470 aka BCP70, “Guidelines for the Use of Extensible
Markup Language (XML) within IETF Protocols”, for JSON.

Rather than niggle about things that aren’t really actually problems, since
JSON is observed to pretty well Just Work, actually add some value by
giving good advice on how to get good mileage in the IETF-protocol context.
For example:

- always use UTF-8
- always include a charset parameter on the Media type anyhow
- always make the top-level construct an object
- never have duplicate keys in an object
- bear in mind that if you include U+0000 in a string value, you are making
life difficult for implementors in certain popular languages

... I’m sure the fertile minds here could add to the list.

 -T