Re: [Json] Consensus on JSON-text (WAS: JSON: remove gap between Ecma-404 and IETF draft)

On Nov 27, 2013, at 7:29 PM, Paul Hoffman wrote:

> <no hat>
> 
> On Nov 27, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Alex Russell <slightlyoff@google.com> wrote:
> 
>> Will you also be citing ECMA-404 normatively to avoid this sort of divergence in the future?
> 
> If you believe that ECMA-404 will change in the future, that would indicate that ECMA might break interoperability with current implementations, even for what they perceive as "good reasons". In general, the IETF tries not to have its long-lived standards normatively latch on to moving targets for this very reason. Even when other SDOs have assured us that they will not make backwards-incompatible changes, they have done so anyway (cue the Klensin-esqe theme music...), and that has caused serious interoperability problems for the IETF specs.

Stability of ECMA-404 should not be a concern. As far as I can observe TC39 has absolutely no interest in every changing or extending the JSON grammar. I'm confident TC39 would record that as a statement of policy if asked. In fact, the reason TC39 chose to issue ECMA-404 was because there was concern that the JSON WG was on a path to modify and possibly extend JSON syntax. The only sort of changes to ECAM-404 I ever expect to see would be technical corrections to errors found in the current specification language or the addition of informative material to help clarify understanding of the specification.  For example, if there was sufficient public interest we might consider adding an informative Annex that restates the grammar using ABNF notation.

The JSON syntax has its roots in the ECMAScript syntax but is not at all linked to the ECMAScript syntax.  The ECMAScript object and array literal constructs were the inspiration for JSON. But even in the beginning, the JSON syntax was only a subset set of the full syntax of those ECMAScript language features.  ECMAScript object literal syntax has been significantly extended in both the ECMA-262 5th Edition(2009) and the forthcoming 6th Edition.  But those extensions have and will not ever be added to the JSON syntax defined in ECMA-404.

Allen Wirfs-Brock
ECMA-262 Project Editor

Received on Thursday, 28 November 2013 17:38:05 UTC