W3C

– DRAFT –
ixml Group Teleconference

22 March 2022

Attendees

Present
Bethan, John, Michael, Norm, Steven, Tomos
Regrets
-
Chair
Steven
Scribe
Steven

Meeting minutes

Previous Actions

Steven: I see 4, but there were another 4, and I have done all 8 and republished the draft

Michael: So all implementations are now broken

Status of implementations

John: All broken

Status of testing and test suites

Michael: also broken

Norm: I submitted a bug
… there is a question to be considered.

<norm> https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/pull/56

Steven: How the test should be classified.

Michael: Dynamic errors are errors in the grammar; another analysis is that we have "not a sentence" "not a grammar" or "dynamic error"

Norm: Or "Not XML"

John: Like XSLT for some inputs it will cause an error, but not for others, so the stylesheet is not in error

Michael: Depends

Tomos: I don;t think the error is in the input.

Steven: We have no conformance requirements on input.

ACTION: Michael to update schema for test catalogs to add dynamic error

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

ACTION: Norm edit the pull request for #56

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

Michael: I rely on the test suite, so would like it to be up to speed as soon as possible.

[General agreement to work on it]

Pull request #54, partial draft of error codes for spec

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/pull/54

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/issues/44

Norm: I did a few of them, to see what it would look like.
… Michael gave it the thumbs up

Tomos: I saw some, but not this one

Steven: I shall look this week.

Tomos: Maybe we should write the spec in a different way

Norm: But with a processing step that generates the errors appendix

Norm: I will set up a CI tool to do the build.

ACTION: John Steven Bethan Tomos to review the errors proposal

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

John: Could we have a prefix on the error numbers, not just a number?

Issue #48 S=a.a.a=c;a.a.a=c;.c='x';a;a.a.

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/issues/48

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2022Mar/0051.html

<norm> FYI: Github is bork. https://www.githubstatus.com/

Michael: I agree with Steven's proposal

ACTION: Steven to change the "." in names rule.

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

Issue #28 Schema for grammars

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/issues/28

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2021Dec/0009.html

Michael: In December I proposed that we have a schema for the grammars in XML form
… we should create and publish such a thing
… that also allows extensibility
… allow namespaced attributes
… in a namespace not in ixml
… and even namespaced elements
… that may be a step too far for some.

John: Namespaced attributes matches xslt, foreign declarations allowed, not sure about elements.
… Can we derive such a schema from ixml?

Michael: Yes

Steven: Sounds like a great topic for a paper

Michael: My code provides relaxng
… still not perfect
… requires some hand editing

John: Is there a tool we could make to provide a schema for the output from ixml?

Michael: Yes

Norm: Are we opposed to such a proposal?

[No]

ACTION: Michael to provide a schema for ixml in XML

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

Spec issue #26 - how is ambiguity defined?

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2022Jan/0030.html

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/issues/26

Norm: I started this...
… I believe I have now concluded that even if all ambiguous parses produce the same XML it is still ambiguous.

Steven: Agree

Michael: We could create test cases. I would like to find wording that alerts users to the possibility that different processors may return different results.

Michael: for instance is "S: "a"*; "b"*. ambiguous on the empty string?

Michael: I would like to make flagging of ambiguity a SHOULD rather than a MUST

Tomos: I don't see the value of knowing something is ambiguous.

Bethan: I can think of lots of reasons why people would care.

Norm: We've agreed that it is a user option.
… this satisfies the I don't care people.
… a paragraph that calls out that ambiguity is differently spotted

Tomos: If something is ambiguous we shouldn't care which parse we get

Michael: No, for some it is important.
… if we've got the wording that Norm mentioned, I'm happy.

ACTION: Steven observing that 'ambiguity' isn't precisely defined

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

Bethan: I think users should be able to say that they don't care about ambiguity, is different from an implementor saying that.

Norm: You won't pass the test suite if you don't report ambiguity

Tomos: One of the strengths of ixml is allowing ambiguous parses

Michael: Still, an ambiguous parse is almost always an error in the grammar.

Steven: And ambiguity slows parsing quite a lot.

Issue #50 Characters or octets? both? either?

https://github.com/invisibleXML/ixml/issues/50

Norm: The current spec is unclear about the input "string".
… I would prefer not to say that the input has to be an stream of unicode.
… I would also like to parse binary files possibly.

Michael: I'm nervous. My parser needs to be a sequence of unicode. I don't want to prevent binary parsing though. How gracefully can we say? Implementation defined?

Norm: Maybe use "it may be able to process binary".

John: Seems like a huge rabbit warren.

Tomos: Be loose about what we accept?

Michael: Which encoding?

Steven: We say UTF-8

<norm> The string "utf" does not appear in the 2022-02-22 spec

Norm: No, there is no UTF in the spec

Steven: Oh!

ACTION: Steven to make it UTF-8

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

Norm: Do we do line ending normalisation? To deal with different line-ending styles?

Steven: You can write a grammar that accepts all possible line endings, so we should just leave it at that.

Norm: I can live with that.

Steven: Do we want to mention octets?

Michael: The more I think about it, the more I think we should say that the input stream is implementation defined.

Tomos: I think "may accept other forms" is best

ACTION: Steven to add MUST accept UTF-8, MAY accept other forms.

<trackbot> Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.

AOB

Steven: Next week pragmas, with an email discussion beforehand

Steven: Next week back to the normal time for USA

Summary of action items

  1. Michael to update schema for test catalogs to add dynamic error
  2. Norm edit the pull request for #56
  3. John Steven Bethan Tomos to review the errors proposal
  4. Steven to change the "." in names rule.
  5. Michael to provide a schema for ixml in XML
  6. Steven observing that 'ambiguity' isn't precisely defined
  7. Steven to make it UTF-8
  8. Steven to add MUST accept UTF-8, MAY accept other forms.
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