RE: Revised Proposal for Widget Signature ABNF

Hi Jere,

Although I did not author the text below, I think the literals are specified as case-sensitive to match the experience from J2ME/MIDP [1].
Also case-sensitivity is more efficient when comparing strings, e.g. in constrained devices, and may be important for inter-operability reasons.
I.e. the spec seems intentional.

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Marcin

[1] http://java.sun.com/javame/reference/apis/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/package-summary.html


Marcin Hanclik
ACCESS Systems Europe GmbH
Tel: +49-208-8290-6452  |  Fax: +49-208-8290-6465
Mobile: +49-163-8290-646
E-Mail: marcin.hanclik@access-company.com
________________________________
From: Jere.Kapyaho@nokia.com [mailto:Jere.Kapyaho@nokia.com]
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 9:02 AM
To: Marcin Hanclik; Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com
Cc: marcosc@opera.com; public-webapps@w3.org
Subject: Re: Revised Proposal for Widget Signature ABNF

Just wanted to ask if you're using the character code terminals (%x61.75 etc.) intentionally because of case sensitivity? Literals like "signature" and ".xml" are allowed in ABNF [1], and they're much easier for humans to read, but the catch is that they are case insensitive (and US-ASCII only). For case-sensitivity, you need to specify the character codes individually, as you've now done. So I guess that's the intent?

--Jere

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5234#section-2.3


On 12.3.2009 23.45, "ext Marcin Hanclik" <Marcin.Hanclik@access-company.com> wrote:
Hi Frederick,

I have further, again formal comments. I am sorry for not spotting that earlier.
The terminals (section 2.3 for RFC5234) can be concatenated with a dot ".".
So

author-signature-filename = %x61 %x75 %x74 %x68 %x6f %x72 %x2d %x73
%x69 %x67 %x6e %x61 %x74 %x75 %x72 %x65 %x2e %x78 %x6d %x6 (missing 'c')

can be represented as

author-signature-filename = %x61.75.74.68.6f.72.2d.73.69.67.6e.61.74.75.72.65.2e.78.6d.6c

This format also seems to guarantee that the whole string is kept in one line in majority of text editors (if line can be long enough).
Otherwise in the final spec a white space has to be put in each following line to satisfy the following rule (section 4.).

rule           =  rulename defined-as elements c-nl
                                ; continues if next line starts
                                ;  with white space

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Marcin
________________________________________
From: Frederick Hirsch [Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 10:15 PM
To: Marcin Hanclik
Cc: Frederick Hirsch; Kapyaho Jere (Nokia-D-MSW/Tampere); ext Marcos Caceres; WebApps WG
Subject: Revised Proposal for Widget Signature ABNF

here is revised proposal, thanks Jere and Marcin

regards, Frederick

---

1) Change section 1.1, Notational conventions as follows:

Replace
This specification uses the following syntax to define filenames.
Characters are appended to numbers to indicate cardinality: "?" (0 or
1) "*" (0 or more) "+" (1 or more)

A range of values is indicated by brackets, .i.e [1-9] indicates a
digit from the range 1 through 9 inclusive.

Concatenated values are written next to each other, with strings
indicated in quotes. Thus "signature" [1-9][0-9]* ".xml"means a string
consisting of "signature" followed by a digit in the range 1-9
inclusive, followed by zero or more digits in the range 0-9 inclusive,
for example, "signature12.xml".

with
This specification uses the following ABNF [ABNF] syntax to define
filenames. Rules are concatenated by being written next to each other
and a rule prepended by * means zero or more. See he ABNF RFC for
details.

2) Changes in the "Naming convention for a author signature:" in
section 5.2 Author Signatures:

The following ABNF [ABNF] rule defines the format of a author
signature file name:

Replace

The reserved file name "author-signature.xml"

with

The reserved lower-case (case sensitive) file name "author-
signature.xml", as defined by the following ABNF [ABNF] rule:

author-signature-filename = %x61 %x75 %x74 %x68 %x6f %x72 %x2d %x73
%x69 %x67 %x6e %x61 %x74 %x75 %x72 %x65 %x2e %x78 %x6d %x6

3) Changes in the "Naming convention for a distributor signature:" in
section 5.3 Distributor Signatures:

3a) Replace

"signature" [1-9][0-9]* ".xml"

with

The following ABNF [ABNF] rule defines the format of a distributor
signature file name:

distributor-signature-filename = signature-string non-zero-digit
*DIGIT  xml-suffix string

signature-string = %x73 %x69 %x67 %x6e %x61 %x74 %x75 %x72 %x65

non-zero-digit = %x31-39

xml-suffix-string =  %x2e %x78 %x6d %x6c

The signature-string rule defines the lower-case (case sensitive)
string "signature" and the xml-suffix-string defines the lower-case
(case sensitive) string ".xml". non-zero-digit defines a digit in the
range 1-9. DIGIT is defined in RFC-5234 [ABNF] to mean a digit in the
range 0-9.

3b) in first bullet, replace 'consisting of the string "signature"'
with 'consisting of the lower-case string "signature"' and replace
'then ".xml", as stated by the BNF' with 'then the lower-case string
".xml", as stated by the ABNF'

3c) replace "BNF" with "ABNF" in the third bullet

4) Add reference to ABNF in references section, with source Jere
noted:

<dt><dfn id="abnf">[ABNF]</dfn></dt>
  <dd>RFC 5234, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/
rfc5234.txt"><cite>Augmented BNF
                for Syntax Specifications: <abbr title="Augmented
                Backus-Naur Form">ABNF</abbr></cite></a>. D. Crocker
and P. Overell.
  January 2008.</dd>


Unless I hear otherwise by Monday, I will make this change to the
editors draft. If you agree with the change please let me know.

Thanks

regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch
Nokia

[1] http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-digsig/


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________________________________
________________________________________

Access Systems Germany GmbH
Essener Strasse 5 | D-46047 Oberhausen
HRB 13548 Amtsgericht Duisburg
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Michel Piquemal, Tomonori Watanabe, Yusuke Kanda

www.access-company.com

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This e-mail and any attachments hereto may contain information that is privileged or confidential, and is intended for use only by the
individual or entity to which it is addressed. Any disclosure, copying or distribution of the information by anyone else is strictly prohibited.
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