Subject: Re: [urn] q-component copied verbatim

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 10:45:42 -0400

We have the following text change proposed, with John's asking others
if the change is OK.  Any (concise, please) answers to that question?:

>> Would it work to simply treat this as a kind of in-principle
>> example, by reordering the paragraph?  That is, along the
>> lines of
>>
>>    The URN q-component has the same syntax as the URI query
>> component,    but is introduced by "?=", not the "?" alone.
>> For URNs which may be    resolved to a URL, the semantics of
>> the q-component are identical to    those for queries to the
>> resource located via that URL.  So URN    resolvers returning
>> a URL for a URN with a q-component do this by    copying the
>> q-component from the URN verbatim to the query component    of
>> the URL.  If the URN does not resolve to a URL the
>> interpretation    of the q-component is undefined by this
>> specification.
>>
>> [I've kept some wording I find awkward to minimise the
>> difference with the existing text -- other things being equal
>> I'd also prefer
>>
>>   those for queries to the resource located via that URL
>>  ==>
>>   those for the query component of that URL
>>
>> ]
>
> Wfm, including the latter.  Would others please comment,
> especially if they have objections, before I change the text?

Barry, as chair

---

From: Sean Leonard <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 12:31:30 -0700

>> especially if they have objections, before I change the text?

As to the specific change:

FROM:

TO: ==>

I agree and approve.

I still disagree strongly with the syntax of that paragraph, namely, 
using "?=" as an introducer anywhere in the q-component.

Sean

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2016 10:14:30 -0400

--On Friday, June 03, 2016 12:31 -0700 Sean Leonard
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> We have the following text change proposed, with John's
>> asking others if the change is OK.  Any (concise, please)
>> answers to that question?:
>...

> I agree and approve.

Done.  I've also taken "verbatim" out.  Both are still tentative
and subject to others objecting -- fwiw, I'm getting very
anxious about these decisions being made by three or four people.

I've also added some example text as requested earlier.
2141bis-17 should be posted shortly after I get the next version
of semantics-clarif up, but that is unlikely to be before early
next week.

> I still disagree strongly with the syntax of that paragraph,
> namely, using "?=" as an introducer anywhere in the
> q-component.

Remembering that decision was reached after a discussion that
went nowhere after an extended period and that Andy finally
delegated the decision to Peter and myself, if you have a new
suggestion to make, as far as I'm concerned, please make it and
see if you can get support.

However some of the earlier discussions suggest to me that part
of the disagreement derives from preferences for thinking about
implementation in terms of regular expression-like pattern
matching versus thinking about them in terms of LR(k)-like
parsing (or in some other way).  I don't think that difference
in preference can be resolved; certainly this WG cannot resolve
it.  I don't remember if Strachey's time at MIT overlapped with
DeRemer and Thompson (if not, it was near-miss), but the
discussion has certainly been going on for a very long time now.
To at least some extend, viewing URIs as strings isolated from
the surrounding environment may be suggestive of the regular
expression approach; thinking about parsing them as part of
parsing a larger text collection (like an XML or HTML document
or something in a programming language) may suggest the LR(k) /
LALR approach.   I suggest that we not spend a lot of time on it
on the basis of preferences between the approaches.

    john

    john