Re: Change Proposal for ISSUE-170, was: ISSUE-170 rel-uri-valid: Chairs Solicit Proposals

On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> SUMMARY

I realize there hasn't been a call for counter-proposals yet, but
here's one anyway:

SUMMARY

ISSUE-170 wants to make URIs valid as link relations. However, the
existing Change Proposal does so in an editorially bad way. This
Change Proposal achieves the effect in an editorially better way.

RATIONALE

The other Change Proposal[1] refers to RFC 5988 to import one section
of the RFC while most of the RFC deals with a registration mechanism
that this WG has specifically rejected in a WG decision. This might
confuse people into thinking that the RFC is imported normatively more
broadly. Furthermore, the relevant section of RFC 5988[2] has a "MUST"
sentence that refers to case-insensitive without defining
case-insensitive properly. This might be cause confusion over whether
that sentence (whatever it means) applies or whether the sentence
"Link types are always ASCII case-insensitive, and must be compared as
such." in HTML5 applies.

DETAILS

After "Extensions to the predefined set of link types may be
registered in the Microformats wiki existing-rel-values page. [MFREL]"
add: "Registered types must. Additionally, absolute URLs that do not
contain characters U+0041 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A) through U+005A
(LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z) (inclusive) may be used as link types."

Change "whereas values marked as "discontinued" or not listed in
either this specification or on the aforementioned page must be
rejected as invalid." to "whereas values marked as "discontinued" or
values not containing a U+003A COLON character but not listed in
either this specification or on the aforementioned page must be
rejected as invalid." After the sentence add: "The remaining values
must be accepted as valid it they are absolute URLs and rejected
otherwise. Note: Even URL-valued link types are compared
ASCII-case-insensitively. Validators might choose to warn about
characters U+0041 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A) through U+005A (LATIN
CAPITAL LETTER Z) (inclusive) in the pre-case-folded form of link
types that contain a colon."

IMPACT

Positive effects

No reference to an RFC that mostly deals with matters that the WG has
rejected in a WG decision thus avoiding confusion about which parts of
the RFC are normatively imported. No reference to text that talks
about case-insensitivity less rigorously.

Negative effects

Compared to the status quo, the spec and validators become more complex.

Conformance Classes Changes

The change affects document and validator conformance.

Risks

Confusion about how URLs are compared. The entire change might be
useless compared to the status quo. (Both risks also apply to the
other Change Proposal.)

References

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Oct/0045.html
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#section-4.2

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Tuesday, 11 October 2011 06:55:53 UTC