Subject: Re: Notation data language

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 10:18:24 -0800

David Shaw writes:
> I've been writing some code involving notation data (5.3.2.16 in
> bis-03).  As I read it, the human-readable flag applies to the value
> data of the name=value pair and not to the name data.
>
> If I do read this correctly, I'd like to suggest a change in the line
> "This note is text, a note from one person to another, and has no
> meaning to software." to read "The value is text, a note from one
> person...", etc, which would help make clear what the human readable
> flag applies to.

I don't fully understand the distinction.  You are saying that the
"name" part would be machine readable, but the "value" part would not?
What would be the point of trying to restrict the name to be machine
readable if it couldn't do anything with the value?  I think it makes
more sense to say that this flag means that machines shouldn't try to
read any of the notation, rather than that they can read part of it but
not the rest.

Hal Finney

---

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 13:37:40 -0500

> "name" part would be machine readable, but the "value" part would not?

Other way around - the language in the draft ("Notation names are
arbitrary strings encoded in UTF-8") strongly suggests that the the
human-readable flag only applies to the "value", and the "name" is
always human readable, albeit UTF8.

I was hoping to make the language clearer, or if I misread the
document, to make it clearer in the other direction :)

David

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