[rfc-i] [Json] v3imp #8 Fragment tagging on sourcecode

[dev+ietf at seantek.com (Sean Leonard)]

On 1/28/2015 10:11 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> * Nico Williams wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 10:25:34AM +1100, Manger, James wrote:
>>>>> Overall I still stand by my proposition that the RFC is the module
>>>>> for ABNF purposes. Honestly it just makes things a lot simpler.
>>>> Well, draft-ietf-json-text-sequence-13 will break this proposition.
>>>> But this issue (two ABNF rules with the same name) was raised earlier, and no one thought it was a problem.
>>> The issued was raised because someone did think it was a problem.
>> I typed too quickly.  I mean that no one thought the change had to be
>> made.
> I very strongly urge to change this.

Yes. Let's just look at this from a readability standpoint.

Suppose you have some standard that defines "newline" in two different 
illustrations as:

newline   = CR
...
newline   = LF


is that really clear? It's pretty unclear. I would call that an 
editorial problem (at least). It would be much clearer to say:

newlineMac  = CR
...
newlineUnix  = LF

anynewline = newlineMac / newlineUnix

i.e., with different rule names. Then you can say things in the 
specification text, like "in UNIX environments, use newlineUnix...but 
when reading data from an unknown source, use anynewline..." and be 
unambiguous.

Sean