14:18:12 RRSAgent has joined #ixml 14:18:12 logging to https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-irc 14:18:21 RRSAgent, make logs public 14:18:30 Meeting: ixml Group Teleconference 14:18:46 Date: 26 April 2022 14:18:53 Chair: Steven 14:19:41 norm has joined #ixml 14:20:00 Previous meeting: https://www.w3.org/2022/04/12-ixml-minutes 14:20:26 Agenda: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ixml/2022Apr/0096.html 14:20:42 rrsagent, make minutes 14:20:42 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html Steven 14:21:42 Are you setting up to scribe today? 14:22:05 Was I selected? I was just setting up the channel 14:22:22 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 Be my gues ;-) 14:22:37 guest 14:23:56 norm has changed the topic to: Identify minute taker 14:24:06 norm has changed the topic to: Invisible XML 14:24:26 Topic: Identify a minute taker 14:24:39 Norm is scribe 14:34:23 norm has changed the topic to: Review of action items 14:34:32 norm has changed the topic to: Invisible XML 14:34:37 Topic: Review of action items 14:34:39 cmsmcq has joined #ixml 14:34:41 ACTION 20220322-001: Michael to update schema for test catalogs to add dynamic error. 14:34:41 Sorry, but no Tracker is associated with this channel. 14:35:05 tovey-walsh has joined #ixml 14:35:14 john has joined #ixml 14:35:17 trackbot, bye 14:35:17 trackbot has left #ixml 14:36:30 Tom has joined #ixml 14:36:41 Ignore that action 14:36:41 ACTION 20220405-003: Norm: Add the error code linkages to the spec (for issue #44). 14:36:49 Norm: completed 14:36:58 ACTION 20220405-004: Norm: to add prose specifying the namespace to use if error codes are given as qualified names (for issue #61). 14:37:11 Norm: completed 14:37:13 ACTION 20220412-001: Steven - to review MSM's proposed text on ambiguity text and where it should end up (for issue #26). 14:37:25 Steven: I moved the text, but I didn't check the proposed change. 14:37:28 Continued 14:37:44 ACTION 20220412-002: Steven - Steven to review the possibility using the names s and RS for optional and required space, respectively. 14:37:47 Steven: completed 14:37:54 ACTION 20220412-003: All - Review of the namespace proposal (for #66). 14:38:02 All claim to have reviewd it 14:38:06 s/wd it/wed it/ 14:38:13 ACTION 20220412-004: Norm to produce some spec. prose on the version (conformance) issue (#63). 14:38:37 Norm: Completed. Michael proposed a change that I think is an improvement. 14:40:41 ACTION 20220412-005: Norm - Improve the README - what format - Markdown or HTML. 14:40:44 Norm: completed 14:41:12 ACTION 20220412-006: Tomos to ensure all can see the Balisage papers (https://github.com/invisibleXML/Balisage2022). 14:41:21 Tomos: completed 14:41:28 Topic: Status of implementations 14:41:53 John: My implementation now handles the ixml spec under the Earley parser in about 300ms. 14:42:30 ... 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. 14:42:38 ... You can get the state chart, etc. 14:43:04 ... I haven't done serious testing yet or handling ambiguity yet. 14:44:38 ... Over the next few weeks I'll try to package that up better. I'm using the browser DOM to build the output. 14:45:32 Steven asks about the DOM. John says he parses to an internal representation, but uses the DOM to get the XML version. 14:45:48 John: It very much canonicalizes as it goes. 14:46:33 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. 14:47:11 Steven: I've updated mine to do the double ** and double ++. 14:49:47 Topic: Status of testing and test suites 14:50:38 Norm: I've updated the tests to the current grammar 14:50:56 Topic: Review and resolution of bug reports and technical issues 14:51:09 Topic: Change ~ to ! in character-set exclusions. 14:51:53 Steven: I'm ok with adding it, but not replacing it. 14:52:04 ... I don't think "!" is a good choice, I don't think it means "not". 14:52:33 ... In ixml, we're not using "not", we're using "complement of". 14:52:57 Tomos: I think it's about familiarity. 14:53:26 Some discussion of "^" instead of "!" or "~" 14:54:23 Bethan: The only issue I have with "~" is that it suggests "approximately" and I find it difficult to find "~" useful. 14:54:42 ... I imagine that most of our users may be in the same position. 14:55:33 Conclusion: there is no consensus to make the change; the status quo remains. 14:56:02 Topic: Use '=' and '|' exclusively. 14:56:27 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. 14:56:43 ... "=" doesn't mean "is defined as". It's not an equality relationship where we have it. 14:57:23 Bethan: Wait, you can't say that different languages can use different symbols and simultaneously that "=" doesn't mean something. 14:58:01 Tomos: I think the use case for "=" is less compelling than the use case for "|" because ";" and "," are harder to distinguish 14:58:11 Bethan: There seems to be a lot of support for defining a single character. 14:59:20 Norm: I think that's true. I thought the unnecessary syntactic variation is weird. 14:59:31 John: Does ";" get used as alternates compared to "|"? 14:59:50 Michael: It depends on how you count. The tradition of grammar notations that includes ALGOL-68 and friends uses ":" and ";". 15:00:34 ... 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 "|". 15:00:39 ... I think YACC may well use ":" 15:01:08 Some discussion of "::=" and it's alternatives. 15:01:34 Bethan: I find the ";" very hard to read as an "or" separator. 15:01:47 Tomos: I think objectively, semicolons are harder to read. 15:02:22 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? 15:02:30 ... I personally don't see what's damaging about allowing a choice. 15:04:02 Norm: I think that cuts both ways, if authors use different characters it makes the grammar harder for a reader. 15:05:07 Norm: Using two characters instead of four saves us two characters for later 15:05:25 John: It sounds like we could remove "=" without too much objection. 15:05:46 ... The advantage of getting that out of the way would allow us to reserve it for later. 15:06:10 ... I don't think it matters from a performance point of view. 15:06:36 Tomos: I don't think it matters too much about the "=" used elsewhere. The characters have meaning contextually. 15:07:05 ... 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. 15:07:25 John: Equally well, it's not just what the punctuation syntax is. It's the layout of the grammar, etc. 15:07:39 ... Style matters as much as the particular punctuation characters. 15:08:21 Steven: May I also bring to your attention the whole point of ixml isn't the syntax, it's the data that matters. 15:08:46 Bethan: What I'm talking about isn't the person writing the grammar, it's about using grammars written by others. 15:09:01 Tomos: It should be a small step to normalize it to your preferred representation. 15:09:06 Bethan: Or we could not have to do that! 15:10:11 Steven: The two basic options are, we agree that there should be one representation or we let users do what they want. 15:11:09 John: I think what we should do is permit what we currently have. 15:11:16 Norm: I don't detect consensus forming here. 15:11:29 Conclusion: there is no consensus to make this change. 15:11:46 Topic: Add a version declaration 15:12:00 Agreed. 15:12:47 ACTION-20220426-01: Norm to propose spec and grammar changes for a version declaration. 15:13:07 Topic: Change ^ to + in literal insertions. 15:13:27 Tomos: Could we allow either? 15:13:47 Some discussion of how the specification currently describes them. 15:14:13 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. 15:14:27 ... I think they are conceptually different. 15:15:53 Norm: My difficulty is that it removes the explicit mark that is the opposite of "-" for literals. 15:16:18 Michael: I think that having a character to mark the default explicitly is a standard feature of language design. 15:16:46 ... You should be able to specify all defaults expicitly. 15:16:55 Steven: I don't like the fact that "+" gets two different uses. 15:17:54 Tomos: Grammatically, it's quite distinct because one is a prefix and one is a postfi. 15:17:57 s/fi./fix/ 15:18:00 s/fix/fix./ 15:18:05 Steven: I can live with it. 15:18:32 Norm: I'd like to do it. 15:18:40 Steven: So a tmark is now ^, -, and +. 15:18:50 ... And mark is ^, -, and @ 15:18:54 Consensus: make this change 15:19:07 ACTION 20220426-02 Steven to change ^ to + for insertions. 15:19:18 John: Are insertions limited to strings? 15:19:33 Steven: No, it can be hex as well, but not a charset. 15:19:41 Micheal: "literal" but not "charset" 15:20:08 s/heal/hael/ 15:20:09 Tom has joined #ixml 15:20:15 Topic: #44 Adopt proposal 3 for error codes. 15:21:43 Steven: Why do the error codes have to be in the spec? 15:22:06 Norm: Because we shouldn't make users go around the houses to find the prose. 15:22:17 John: I'm fine with the index, but I'd still expect to find the error *names* in the prose where they occur. 15:23:20 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. 15:23:39 ... Also, users are going to google the error codes, it would be nice if they got taken to the right part of the spec. 15:24:03 Steven: I'm happy to look up the error codes. 15:24:13 Tomos: Which would would you prefer? 15:24:27 Steven: My preference was the superscript. 15:25:33 Bethan: I'm having trouble understanding what's intrusive about the error coes. 15:25:35 s/coes/codes/ 15:25:53 Steven: Why do we want error codes? So that we could make implementations testable. 15:26:19 Bethan: If a user does something wrong, they're going to get back an error code. 15:26:28 Steven: They shouldn't have to, the get a message. 15:26:56 John posts an example from the XPath spec. 15:27:09 https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#func-numeric-mod 15:27:35 John: I think something like this at each error condition is what we need. 15:28:01 ... These kinds of messages give me precision. 15:29:15 Bethan: A lot of StackOverflow questions are about the messages. 15:29:20 Steven: I can live with three 15:30:04 Consensus: Adopt positon 3. 15:30:55 ACTION-20220426-03 Norm to update the spec with error codes. 15:31:01 Adjourned 15:31:07 rrsagent, make logs public 15:31:12 rrsagent, publish minute 15:31:12 I'm logging. I don't understand 'publish minute', norm. Try /msg RRSAgent help 15:31:16 rrsagent, publish minutes 15:31:16 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html norm 15:31:22 rrsagent, make minutes 15:31:22 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html norm 15:31:23 rrsagent, make minutes 15:31:23 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html cmsmcq 15:31:57 Present: Steven, Tom, John, Bethan, Michael, Norm 15:32:00 rrsagent, make minutes 15:32:00 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/04/26-ixml-minutes.html norm 15:51:16 liam has joined #ixml