IRC log of ixml on 2022-04-26

Timestamps are in UTC.

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logging to https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-irc
14:18:21 [Steven]
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Meeting: ixml Group Teleconference
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Date: 26 April 2022
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Chair: Steven
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Previous meeting: https://www.w3.org/2022/04/12-ixml-minutes
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Agenda: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2022Apr/0096.html
14:20:42 [Steven]
rrsagent, make minutes
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I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html Steven
14:21:42 [norm]
Are you setting up to scribe today?
14:22:05 [Steven]
Was I selected? I was just setting up the channel
14:22:22 [norm]
I thought it was me, and I'm happy to do it. Ok. Cool. Me then. Unless someone else wants to do it :-)
14:22:33 [Steven]
Be my gues ;-)
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guest
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norm has changed the topic to: Identify minute taker
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norm has changed the topic to: Invisible XML
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Topic: Identify a minute taker
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Norm is scribe
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norm has changed the topic to: Review of action items
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norm has changed the topic to: Invisible XML
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Topic: Review of action items
14:34:39 [cmsmcq]
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ACTION 20220322-001: Michael to update schema for test catalogs to add dynamic error.
14:34:41 [trackbot]
Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel.
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trackbot, bye
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14:36:30 [Tom]
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14:36:41 [norm]
Ignore that action
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ACTION 20220405-003: Norm: Add the error code linkages to the spec (for issue #44).
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Norm: completed
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ACTION 20220405-004: Norm: to add prose specifying the namespace to use if error codes are given as qualified names (for issue #61).
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Norm: completed
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ACTION 20220412-001: Steven - to review MSM's proposed text on ambiguity text and where it should end up (for issue #26).
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Steven: I moved the text, but I didn't check the proposed change.
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Continued
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ACTION 20220412-002: Steven - Steven to review the possibility using the names s and RS for optional and required space, respectively.
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Steven: completed
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ACTION 20220412-003: All - Review of the namespace proposal (for #66).
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All claim to have reviewd it
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s/wd it/wed it/
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ACTION 20220412-004: Norm to produce some spec. prose on the version (conformance) issue (#63).
14:38:37 [norm]
Norm: Completed. Michael proposed a change that I think is an improvement.
14:40:41 [norm]
ACTION 20220412-005: Norm - Improve the README - what format - Markdown or HTML.
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Norm: completed
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ACTION 20220412-006: Tomos to ensure all can see the Balisage papers (https://github.com/invisibleXML/Balisage2022).
14:41:21 [norm]
Tomos: completed
14:41:28 [norm]
Topic: Status of implementations
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John: My implementation now handles the ixml spec under the Earley parser in about 300ms.
14:42:30 [norm]
... It's a set of JavaScript files. It uses a custom parser for the input ixml, then an Earley parser that I wrote from scratch.
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... You can get the state chart, etc.
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... I haven't done serious testing yet or handling ambiguity yet.
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... Over the next few weeks I'll try to package that up better. I'm using the browser DOM to build the output.
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Steven asks about the DOM. John says he parses to an internal representation, but uses the DOM to get the XML version.
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John: It very much canonicalizes as it goes.
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Norm: I’ve updated my processor to the (now current) grammar but I’m eager to see the other proposals adopted so I can update it again before making any sort of announcements about the changes.
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Steven: I've updated mine to do the double ** and double ++.
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Topic: Status of testing and test suites
14:50:38 [norm]
Norm: I've updated the tests to the current grammar
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Topic: Review and resolution of bug reports and technical issues
14:51:09 [norm]
Topic: Change ~ to ! in character-set exclusions.
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Steven: I'm ok with adding it, but not replacing it.
14:52:04 [norm]
... I don't think "!" is a good choice, I don't think it means "not".
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... In ixml, we're not using "not", we're using "complement of".
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Tomos: I think it's about familiarity.
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Some discussion of "^" instead of "!" or "~"
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Bethan: The only issue I have with "~" is that it suggests "approximately" and I find it difficult to find "~" useful.
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... I imagine that most of our users may be in the same position.
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Conclusion: there is no consensus to make the change; the status quo remains.
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Topic: Use '=' and '|' exclusively.
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Steven: I'm of the opinion that different languages are allowed to have different syntaxes. I added them as a sop to users who wanted them.
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... "=" doesn't mean "is defined as". It's not an equality relationship where we have it.
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Bethan: Wait, you can't say that different languages can use different symbols and simultaneously that "=" doesn't mean something.
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Tomos: I think the use case for "=" is less compelling than the use case for "|" because ";" and "," are harder to distinguish
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Bethan: There seems to be a lot of support for defining a single character.
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Norm: I think that's true. I thought the unnecessary syntactic variation is weird.
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John: Does ";" get used as alternates compared to "|"?
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Michael: It depends on how you count. The tradition of grammar notations that includes ALGOL-68 and friends uses ":" and ";".
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... I've always found them appealing on that basis. But I think it's fair to say that YACC and it's workalikes are more used than any other notation and they tend to use "|".
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... I think YACC may well use ":"
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Some discussion of "::=" and it's alternatives.
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Bethan: I find the ";" very hard to read as an "or" separator.
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Tomos: I think objectively, semicolons are harder to read.
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Steven: There are several things going on here. Do we want a single syntax or do we want to allow people to use the things they want to use?
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... I personally don't see what's damaging about allowing a choice.
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Norm: I think that cuts both ways, if authors use different characters it makes the grammar harder for a reader.
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Norm: Using two characters instead of four saves us two characters for later
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John: It sounds like we could remove "=" without too much objection.
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... The advantage of getting that out of the way would allow us to reserve it for later.
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... I don't think it matters from a performance point of view.
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Tomos: I don't think it matters too much about the "=" used elsewhere. The characters have meaning contextually.
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... I was ready to say that we should standardize on one or the other. But the more we talk about it, the less convinced I become.
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John: Equally well, it's not just what the punctuation syntax is. It's the layout of the grammar, etc.
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... Style matters as much as the particular punctuation characters.
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Steven: May I also bring to your attention the whole point of ixml isn't the syntax, it's the data that matters.
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Bethan: What I'm talking about isn't the person writing the grammar, it's about using grammars written by others.
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Tomos: It should be a small step to normalize it to your preferred representation.
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Bethan: Or we could not have to do that!
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Steven: The two basic options are, we agree that there should be one representation or we let users do what they want.
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John: I think what we should do is permit what we currently have.
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Norm: I don't detect consensus forming here.
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Conclusion: there is no consensus to make this change.
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Topic: Add a version declaration
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Agreed.
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ACTION-20220426-01: Norm to propose spec and grammar changes for a version declaration.
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Topic: Change ^ to + in literal insertions.
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Tomos: Could we allow either?
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Some discussion of how the specification currently describes them.
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Michael: I applaud the attempt to make them parallel. I found it very problematic because I find it impossible to relate the behavior of marking tagging a nonterminal as an insertion.
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... I think they are conceptually different.
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Norm: My difficulty is that it removes the explicit mark that is the opposite of "-" for literals.
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Michael: I think that having a character to mark the default explicitly is a standard feature of language design.
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... You should be able to specify all defaults expicitly.
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Steven: I don't like the fact that "+" gets two different uses.
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Tomos: Grammatically, it's quite distinct because one is a prefix and one is a postfi.
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s/fi./fix/
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s/fix/fix./
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Steven: I can live with it.
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Norm: I'd like to do it.
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Steven: So a tmark is now ^, -, and +.
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... And mark is ^, -, and @
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Consensus: make this change
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ACTION 20220426-02 Steven to change ^ to + for insertions.
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John: Are insertions limited to strings?
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Steven: No, it can be hex as well, but not a charset.
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Micheal: "literal" but not "charset"
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s/heal/hael/
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Topic: #44 Adopt proposal 3 for error codes.
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Steven: Why do the error codes have to be in the spec?
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Norm: Because we shouldn't make users go around the houses to find the prose.
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John: I'm fine with the index, but I'd still expect to find the error *names* in the prose where they occur.
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Bethan: Firstly, if you go from the index to the text, you can't expect users to magically know what sentence is about the error.
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... Also, users are going to google the error codes, it would be nice if they got taken to the right part of the spec.
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Steven: I'm happy to look up the error codes.
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Tomos: Which would would you prefer?
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Steven: My preference was the superscript.
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Bethan: I'm having trouble understanding what's intrusive about the error coes.
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s/coes/codes/
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Steven: Why do we want error codes? So that we could make implementations testable.
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Bethan: If a user does something wrong, they're going to get back an error code.
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Steven: They shouldn't have to, the get a message.
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John posts an example from the XPath spec.
15:27:09 [Tom]
https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#func-numeric-mod
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John: I think something like this at each error condition is what we need.
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... These kinds of messages give me precision.
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Bethan: A lot of StackOverflow questions are about the messages.
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Steven: I can live with three
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Consensus: Adopt positon 3.
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ACTION-20220426-03 Norm to update the spec with error codes.
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Adjourned
15:31:07 [cmsmcq]
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15:31:16 [norm]
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I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html norm
15:31:22 [norm]
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I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html norm
15:31:23 [cmsmcq]
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I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html cmsmcq
15:31:57 [norm]
Present: Steven, Tom, John, Bethan, Michael, Norm
15:32:00 [norm]
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