Re: [port-srv-reg] Making progress

[Stuart Cheshire <[e-mail]>]

On 7 Sep, 2010, at 13:51, Mark Mcfadden wrote:

> The most recent version in the repository has the changes suggested  
> by Michelle and Pearl.  The attachment has the before and after  
> language.  Of course, a simple diff is also going to provide you  
> with a view of the small changes that were made.  They were:

I see you added.

       <t>Note that the historic "port name" is now the "service  
name" and
       follows the service name syntax defined in this section. </t>

To be strictly accurate, this should say:

       <t>In approximately 98% of cases, the new "service name" is  
exactly
       the same as the old historic "short name" from the IANA web forms
       <xref target="SYSFORM"/> <xref target="USRFORM"/>. In  
approximately 2% of
       cases, the new "service name" is derived from the old historic  
"short
       name" as described below in <xref target="consistency"/>.</t>


> It wasn't my suggestion, but I believe that it is useful to avoid  
> potential confusion in names.
>
> this-svc    and
> this--svc
>
> would be easy to confuse.  I don't think that it (consecutive  
> hyphens) is a necessary syntax feature.
>
> mark

We can't stop people creating deliberately confusing names. Limiting  
length and character set is beneficial for implementation reasons.  
Prohibiting services called "23" or "6000-6063" is beneficial if it  
avoids developer confusion with ports or port ranges. Apart from  
addressing those specific concerns, I don't think we need to be  
adding additional restrictions.

Stuart Cheshire <[e-mail]>
* Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Inc.
* www.stuartcheshire.org