Re: Grinding to a halt on Issue 27.

While I have no way to know for sure, I imagine today's TAG 
telcon was a less than fulfilling experience, and I appreciate
the pain and effort that I'm sure went into it.  

Unfortunately, at this time, XML 1.1 and Namespaces 1.1 (which 
have to go to Rec in tandem) are subsequently grinding to a halt.

Would it be preferable to put these specs on hold for a year,
or should we pull IRIs out of the XML 1.1 and Namespaces 1.1 
specs and take them to Rec?

It was precisely because of the IRI issue in Namespaces 1.1
that this issue was raised.  At the time we raised it, the
XML Core WG was on the fence and was happy to go either way
(with or without IRIs in Namespaces 1.1).  I believe we're
still happy enough to go either way.  (Perhaps some of us
are also willing to take a year's vacation, but we hadn't
entertained that option when we first raised this issue.)

Perhaps it is no longer fair to expect the TAG to answer this
question for us.

Perhaps the XML Core WG should take responsibility for this 
decision and just make a call and go forward with a couple 
PR requests and see what the Director says.  I'm willing to
take that responsibility if necessary, but if it's clear that
would be futile, I'd prefer to know in advance.

paul

At 15:16 2003 04 28 -0700, Tim Bray wrote:

>We spent essentially our whole meeting today on our issue 27:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/ilist#IRIEverywhere-27
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Oct/0186
>
>I had proposed that we close the issue as follows:
>
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Apr/0090.html
>
>Misha Wolf and Stuart Williams had followed up with useful commentary at the detail level.
>
>Today, we were unable to come close to consensus in favor of saying "Yes, use IRIs."  The purpose of this note is to try to enumerate the problems causing the blockage.
>
>1. Roy Fielding is concerned about the fact that the IRI spec isn't finished, saying "it would be ridiculous to say we support IRIs" when it isn't clear yet what they are.
>
>2. Dan Connolly and Tim Berners-Lee both are nervous about separating issue 27 from our Issue 15, about when URIs compare equal.  Adding fuel to the fire is the latest draft of the namespaces 1.1 spec:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-xml-names11-20021218/
>
>Which in section 9 says namespaces can be IRIs, and in section 3 requires that all comparison of names be done based on exact string equality.
>
>Dan (apparently) thinks this is correct and appropriate.  TimBL on the other hand thinks that this will cause breakage, as future URI-comparison software will probably do things like regard %7e and %7E as the same, and thus will produce inconsistent results.
>
>I share concerns about the wording in the namespaces draft, BTW.  Roy suggested that it should be reworded to say that no canonicalization is required before namespace comparison rather than say that ~wilbur, %7ewilbur, and %7Ewilbur "are different", because in fact per the RFCs they're not different.  But this wouldn't stop me saying that it's OK to start writing in support for internationalized identifiers.
>
>In any case, at the moment, we're paralyzed on this issue because of these unresolved differences.  This is on the face of it at one level ridiculous, because the first W in WWW stands for "World" and it's a no-brainer that identifiers ought to include non-ASCII characters.
>
>I think we do generally agree that the IRI work is in a good and useful direction, and that one thing that would be totally useful would be to get behind the work on the IRI draft:
>
>  http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/
>
>And get that nailed down and blessed.
>-- 
>Cheers, Tim Bray
>        (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)
>

Received on Monday, 28 April 2003 18:44:37 UTC