Re: more 3028bis comments

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> > > > The 'variables' extension has to specify greedy/non-greedy ":matches" ;
> > > > this really ought to be in 3028 so that extensions can consistently
> > > > follow whatever rule there is; although, again, it might fail the
> > > > "non-substantive" test.

> > > I don't think this behaviour description is relevant for the main spec.
> > > it can not be observed without the variables extension.

> > Yes, exactly so. This could easily come back to bite us when we need to move to
> > draft.

> sorry, I'm dense.  are you agreeing with Mark or with me?

With you.

My worry here is that requiring non-greedy in the base specification is, as you
put it, requiring nonobservable behavior that cannot be externally verified.
When documents go to draft we at a minimum will have to write up a list of
conformance criteria and then make sure we have enough conforming
implementations. Including non-observable criteria on the list means that
the only person who can submit information about a given implementation
is someone able to see the code for that implementation. This would have
been a problem for several past conformance list exercises.

				Ned