Re: [secdir] [Json] secdir review of draft-ietf-jsonbis-rfc7159bis-03

[Peter Cordell <[e-mail]>]

On 16/03/2017 10:49, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 2017-03-16 11:28, Peter Cordell wrote:
>>
>> 8.1.  Character Encoding
>>
>>    JSON text SHOULD be encoded in UTF-8 [UNICODE] (Section 3).  JSON
>>    texts that are encoded in UTF-8 are interoperable in the sense that
>>    they will be read successfully by the maximum number of
>>    implementations.
>>
>>    There are many implementations that cannot successfully read texts
>>    in other encodings.  JSON text MAY be encoded in other encodings if
>>    the generator is sure that the intended parsers can read them.
>>
>>    Implementations MUST NOT add a byte order mark to the beginning of a
>>    JSON text.  In the interests of interoperability, implementations
>>    that parse JSON texts MAY ignore the presence of a byte order mark
>>    rather than treating it as an error.
>>
>> Are "generator" and "parser" the correct terms to use in this instance,
>> or does that functionality sit above the character encoding layer?
>> ...
>
> Not convinced.
>
> a) It's not constrained to UTF-8/16/32, so people might decide to
> support ISO-8859-1, or UTF-7-

Why is that a problem if the generator knows the parser can read it?  If 
someone wants to use EBCDIC for whatever reason, are they not allowed to 
call it JSON?

> b) It doesn't state that the only way to support encodings other than
> UTF-8 is to inspect the leading octets for zeros (or their lack of).

UTF detection is one way.  It's not the only way.  If you want to go the 
UTF detection way or some other way, rfc7159bis shouldn't prevent it, 
but it doesn't have to tell you how to do it.

Cheers,

Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
C++ tools for C++ programmers, http://codalogic.com
Read & write XML in C++, http://www.xml2cpp.com
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