- From: Michael Dyck <jmdyck@ibiblio.org>
- Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:09:57 -0800
- To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language W3C Working Draft 12 November 2003 A.2.2 Lexical Rules This section should be deleted, or at least made non-normative. I have made this point several times before: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-query-comments/2002Jan/0002.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2002Aug/0021.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2002Nov/0105.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2004Jan/0407.html I've received a few replies, but never a satisfactory justification. This time, I'll presumably at least get an official WG response. Here's a summary of my objections to this section: (1) It's error-prone. (2) It's poorly defined. There's only a vague description of the automaton. There's no definition of: --- its possible configurations; --- how its configuration is changed by each different kind of transition; --- what its initial and accepting configurations are. Moreover, there's no description of how the automaton ascertains which pattern (of the currently legal patterns) matches the current input. (Note that most automata don't have to deal with this, because their "pattern" vocabulary is the same as their input vocabulary.) (3) It favours a particular implementation strategy, making conformance more difficult for anyone choosing to use a different strategy. All of which could be improved or excused if it were actually necessary, but: (4) It isn't necessary. It's redundant, given the rest of Appendix A. Or, if it actually *does* express a requirement not expressed elsewhere, then either it's a mistake, or it *should* be expressed explicitly elsewhere. And if you don't understand the implications of A.2.2 enough to *know* whether it expresses unique requirements, then that lack of knowledge alone should tell you that you can't risk making it normative. -Michael Dyck
Received on Saturday, 14 February 2004 17:11:16 UTC