Re: draft-gregorio-uritemplate-02.txt

John Cowan wrote:
> Joe Gregorio scripsit:
> 
>>> 1. varname is unnecessarily restrictive. There is no harm that I can see
>>>    in using the following:
>>>
>>>    unreservedsansdash  = (alphanum / "." / "_" / "~")
>>>    varname             = unreservedsansdash *(unreserved)
>>>
>>>    For URI Templates, this is *extremely* minor, but for IRI
>>>    Templates (see below) this will have a significant impact on
>>>    what characters can be used for varname (replace unreserved
>>>    with iunreserved)
>> That makes sense.
> 
> I disagree.  Since variable names are the point where URI Templates meet
> the host environment, the set of available names should be those of the
> most restrictive (commonly used) host environment, namely those which
> match [A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*.
> 

For URI Templates they generally would be.  For IRI Templates, however,
given that the whole point behind IRI's is to allow non-ascii characters
to be used, it makes very little sense to limit the varname to the ASCII
alphabet.  Allowing this does not make the template any harder to parse.

- James