[Bug 26614] New: change "violation of Unicode" notes to something less scary (per Unicode)

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=26614

            Bug ID: 26614
           Summary: change "violation of Unicode" notes to something less
                    scary (per Unicode)
           Product: WHATWG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Encoding
          Assignee: annevk@annevk.nl
          Reporter: addison@lab126.com
        QA Contact: sideshowbarker+encodingspec@gmail.com
                CC: mike@w3.org, www-international@w3.org

Ken Whistler advised us:
==
Re the note in Section 4.2, I do not understand at all why you word this
as “In violation of section 1.4 of UTS #22…” How is this a “violation” of
anything? The wording in UTS #22 is:

“… For best results, names should be compared after applying the
following transformations: …”

That is simply a recommendation for how to minimize non-recognition
of variations in spelling of charset names in labels. It doesn’t really have
anything to do with the actual conformance clause of UTS #22. So I
don’t see how anybody could actually be in “violation” of it.

The W3C “Encodings” document just makes a much more detailed
and prescriptive mapping of charset labels to the specified encodings
it enumerates. Why don’t you just say *that*, instead:

=============================================================

Note: This specification provides a more detailed and prescriptive
mapping of charset labels to encodings than the loose matching
for charset aliases recommended by UTS #22 … etc., etc.

=============================================================

See? No violation anywhere.

I have a similar reaction to your notes in 14.2 and 14.4. I also do not see
those as “violations” of the Unicode Standard (which, by the way, I would
spell with a capitalized “Standard”).

Start with 14.4 utf-16le. The Unicode Standard does not specify “labels” for
charsets, so I don’t see how you’d be in violation of the standard by
defining how you interpret charset labels. Essentially, you are saying:

=========================================================

Note: For [insert reason here] the label “utf-16” is treated as synonymous
with the label “utf-16le”, and also identifies the utf-16le encoding.

===========================================================

And for your note in 14.2, I think the statement is just wrong. This is
not a violation of the Unicode Standard. It is very much in the spirit
of the definition of the UTF-16 encoding scheme to treat the BOM
as signature and use it to identity the actual byte order of a stream.
And if that is used to override an explicit (but erroneous) charset
labeling, so be it. See Asmus’ comment, which just crossed mine.

In any case, I would advise rewording all three of these notes in
your document. Rather than having a rhetorical stance that
says, “We violate the Unicode Standard, but that’s o.k., because
this item is uncontroversial, and …”, why would you need to state
any violations here at all? Just put in clarifying notes to forestall
people from *claiming* that these practices violate the Unicode
Standard (or UTS #22).

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Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2014 15:36:34 UTC