Re: [Json] Consensus call: establishing name equality

[John Cowan <[e-mail]>]

Carsten Bormann scripsit:

> (On of the persistent problems with IETF specifications is that the only
> formal description method used widely, ABNF, makes the reader focus
> on the representation, when actually it would often be more useful to
> focus on the represented data object.  It is almost always crucial to
> clearly distinguish the two.

Indeed it is!

> Clearly, what we are interchanging are the represented objects,

I would say just the opposite: clearly, what we are exchanging is the
representations.  The represented objects never go anywhere: they are
re-created at the destination and are hopefully isomorphic to those
that existed at the source.

I'm not sure if you really disagree or it was just a lapsus linguae.

> so some purists argue we never need to even talk about their
> interpretation.  That is a fallacy, because there is no interchange
> unless the interpretations match well enough.)

Indeed.

> *): How do you like "\u028ä"?  Well, that may seem invalid and is a
> bit hard to read, but if may mail client hadn't normalized it under my
> fingers,

The moral here is never to place a combining character directly after
markup, or it will combine with the markup.  The W3C Character Model
draft makes this point.

> it would be the same as "\u028a\u0308", which is a credible
> upsilon diaeresis 

Not so much; Latin upsilon (used in IPA) has serifs, which makes it
quite un-Greek in form.  The proper upsilon with diaeresis (dialytika)
is U+03CB.

-- 
John Cowan   http://ccil.org/~cowan  [e-mail]
[P]olice in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting
on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV
cop shows.  When it's explained to them that they are in a different country,
where those rights do not exist, they become outraged.  --Neal Stephenson