Re: New Working Group Note: Requirements for String Identity Matching and String Indexing

* Richard Ishida wrote:
>http://www.w3.org/TR/charreq/

Two things are identical if you cannot tell them apart. Two things are
merely equivalent in some context if the differences between them are of
no concern in that context. The document confuses these terms as should
be apparent from awkward phrases like "The string identity matching
specification shall not treat as equivalent"; clearly a specification
defining *identity* would treat things as *identical*, not as /equiva-
lent/.

The definition "Two strings match as identical if they contain no user-
identifiable distinctions" is inherently incorrect. If there is any
difference at all between two strings then users can necessarily identi-
fy them. I find this terminological confusion harmful and would ask the
Working Group to either change or withdraw the document.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ 

Received on Wednesday, 7 October 2009 01:48:52 UTC