RE: CCL proposal (quotes)

I don't want yet another unsupported (or worse yet, profiled out) truncation
attribute.  Let's put Alan's suggested clarifications in and live with it.
I always hated z39.58 anyway, so this just gives me another reason. :-)

Thanks for sticking to your guns Alan!

Ralph

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Kent [mailto:ajk@MDS.RMIT.EDU.AU]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 9:29 PM
> To: Z39.50 LISTSERV
> Subject: Re: CCL proposal (quotes)
> 
> 
> On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 07:55:41AM -0400, Mark Reichert wrote:
> > I knew I had it around somewhere.  Z39.58-1992 is/was clear 
> on this matter.
> 
> To me this means the documentation for the Z39.58 regexp attribute
> already in Bib-1 is incomplete - the textual description of 
> the pattern
> has ommitted the Z39.58 documented support for quotes for releasing.
> 
> Note: I don't like \ to release things in a Z39.58 regexp. We have
> a CCL parser as according to the now obsolete spec. Introducing \
> now would be a non-backwards compatible change to our implementation
> that is not inline with Z39.58. (We actually allow users to enable
> special \ processing as a preprocess phase to the CCL parsing to
> allow UTF-8 etc sequences to be embedded into the CCL query. This
> did not require a change to CCL - its a preprocess of user input
> before its given to the CCL parser.)
> 
> I therefore propose that the Z39.58 regexp attribute as currently
> in Z39.50 be corrected to be made conformant with the CCL spec as
> Mark quoted in has mail (that is, allow quotes in it). This seems
> the semantically correct solution.
> 
> Ralph for his non-Z39.58-conformant (but arguably more human friendly)
> regexp definition can use a new attribute with a new definition.
> Since almost no-one (we do!) supports the current Z39.58 regexp
> attribute, introducing a new attribute would not be that much of
> a problem would it?
> 
> But I think its bad precedent to say "well this attribute was intended
> to support this standard, but the standard was not very friendly so
> we changed its meaning afterwards to be non-conformant."
> 
> Note: I am not picking on Ralph here - at the end of the day it really
> does not matter to me that much since almost no-one supports 
> the attribute
> (at least that appears to be on this list). So I can change 
> our attribute
> easily too, but trying to be objective I would say the current Z39.58
> regexp attribute appears to be in error with the spec (so fix it),
> and if someone wants a new pattern, fine, introduce a new 
> pattern attribute
> for the new pattern rather than change the existing definition.
> I don't think personal likes and dislikes (including my own) should
> influence the adoption of standards.
> 
> Mind you, my objectivity is in question since I am probably the only
> other person who has implemented the Z39.58 regexp attribute, 
> and Ralph's
> proposed \ for releasing would cause me problems! :-) :-) :-)
> 
> If a new 'Ralph' pattern was introduced, we would probably have a go
> at supporting it in our server (it would be so similar to our existing
> pattern support that it should not be too hard to add into 
> our server).
> 
> Alan
> 
> ps: What humans type in by the way does not have to directly 
> correspond
> to what is sent in a regex. Ralph's client could always 
> convert a?45 or
> a?4\5 automatically into a?4"5" for sending down the wire.
>

Received on Wednesday, 8 May 2002 09:26:38 UTC