[Bug 6707] [Schema Comment] Erratum for lexical representation for positiveInteger

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6707


C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|RESOLVED                    |REOPENED
         Resolution|WORKSFORME                  |




--- Comment #4 from C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>  2009-04-20 20:54:20 ---
To the question of how to make sure you are informed of WG actions on 
this issue:  you're now in the CC list, so you should be getting Bugzilla mail
whenever the issue is updated.  (I'll mention now that you can adjust your
user options to exclude some or all of Bugzilla's notices.)

On the issue of positiveInteger and its lexical space, it occurs to me that 
there are three things (at least!) that may be attracting your disapprobation
and which the WG might fix (or not).  We may have been overhasty in assuming
we understood your comment in the first place.

Since the bug report was raised on your behalf by David Ezell, you may
well be right that you don't have the permissions needed to change its
status.  I believe that your message in comment 2 amounts to providing 
pushback and that if you had had the buttons in front of you you would have
reopened the issue, so I am reopening it on your behalf.  (If I've
misunderstood
let me know.)

(1) If you mean that the prose description of the lexical space in 
3.4.25.1 is unnecessarily loose and sloppy, I think I agree.  The current
text of the section is:

    positiveInteger has a lexical representation consisting of an optional 
    positive sign ('+') followed by a non-empty finite-length sequence 
    of decimal digits (#x30-#x39).  For example: 1, 12678967543233, 
    +100000.

I don't think it's terribly misleading, but I also don't think it would hurt
very much to make it a little tighter; we could insert "at least one of
which should be a digit other than '0'" at the end of the first sentence.

Would that help?

If (as feared in comment 3) readers ask why the description of the
lexical space in descriptions of short and byte and so on are not
similarly precise and exact, I think the only answer we can give is
"there is a point at which additional precision in the prose costs more
in syntactic obscurity than it provides in semantic clarity.  It's a 
judgement call where the line lies; our judgement is reflected in our
text; ymmv".

(2) If it is the value of the 'pattern' facet given in 3.4.25.3  that is the
source of dissatisfaction, it's a bit harder.  That value is inherited from
'integer' and for the reasons given by Michael Kay I wouldn't like (and
I don't expect the WG to wish) to change it.  

But since you didn't actually mention the possible leading minus sign
mentioned in the pattern facet, I'm guessing it's not the pattern
facet that is at issue here.

(3) If it is the definition of positiveInteger in appendix C.2 that 
attracted your attention, then (a) I'm reluctant to change it, again
for the same reasons, but (b) congratulations, you may be the first
documented reader of that mass of gray undigestible text outside
(or possibly inside) the WG in the last several years.  

If all you mean is (1), then I apologize on behalf of the WG for
having been a bit dense and slow on the uptake, and I endorse the
editorial change suggested above.


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Received on Monday, 20 April 2009 20:54:30 UTC