Subject: #1084 Names for ABNF productions - closing

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 21:09:37 +0200

I found no consensus for change - one loud voice (Bruce) and a lot of 
comments indicating that they did not see a big difference (meaning that 
Bruce did not convince them) does not make a consensus.

So unless there are other people arguing strongly for changing the ABNF 
production names from "msg-id", "subject", "comments" and so on to 
"news-msg-id", "news-subject", "news-comments" and so on, I'll declare this 
ticket closed.

                            Harald

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 06:36:43 -0400

> "news-msg-id", "news-subject", "news-comments" and so on, I'll declare this 

Changes should be accepted or rejected on their merits, not how many
people advocate them.  Maybe you are suggesting we post "Me too" for
every post we agree with?

I am with Bruce.  The change is simple and adds clarity and makes
the job of auditing software for compliance easier.

USEFOR grabs a whole bunch of production names from RFC2822.  How is
an implementor supposed to know which ones are different without
keeping track of a mental list?  It's bad enough there are header fields
which have more restrictive grammar but the same names.  But that
cannot be avoided.

We must not ignore that implementors want to adapt RFC2822-compliant
software to usefor, not write from scratch.  Having ABNF production names
be different when they are different makes it possible to inventory
everything that must be reviewed for compliance.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 06:14:37 -0700

Changing the subject, since I want to reply to the point about accepting 
ideas on merit:

--On 22. august 2005 06:36 -0400 "Forrest J. Cavalier III" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> "news-msg-id", "news-subject", "news-comments" and so on, I'll declare
>> this  ticket closed.
>>
>

Sometimes that's appropriate. Mostly it's not. In this case, I was 
explicitly trying to find if there were anyone who wanted to send "me too" 
posts, and got one so far (yours).

Remember - the chairs have been reviled a number of times for allowing 
stuff to get into the documents that only one person agrees with. Rejecting 
ideas that fail to convince other people is one tool to use when 
"evaluating on merit"; if I did not consider what other people think, I'd 
be arbitrating based on my personal taste.

You can't have it both ways.

                  Harald

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 06:03:48 -0700

--On 22. august 2005 06:36 -0400 "Forrest J. Cavalier III" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> keeping track of a mental list?

All of the ones that appear on the left hand side of a production are 
different. That's a rather simple rule.....

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:39:12 +0100

Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:

>> comments indicating that they did not see a big difference (meaning 
>> that Bruce did not convince them) does not make a consensus.
>>
>> So unless there are other people arguing strongly for changing the 
>> ABNF production names from "msg-id", "subject", "comments" and so on 
>> to "news-msg-id", "news-subject", "news-comments" and so on, I'll 
>> declare this ticket closed.
>
> [...]

Having an explicit list of changed ABNF productions addresses this as 
well. I don't see much difference between the two approaches, but 
renaming productions might introduce errors in the document, IMHO.

Alexey

---

From: Henry Spencer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:02:33 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:
> people advocate them.

"Merits" as determined how, exactly?

Very occasionally a change is an obvious non-starter -- internally
contradictory or otherwise ridiculous.  But in almost all other cases, its
"merits" are a judgement call -- a matter of opinion -- and the only way
to assess them is to see what the WG members think.

Calling for something to be assessed "on its merits" tends to be a code
phrase for "obviously I'm right and you're wrong, so we should do it my way".

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       [email-masked]

---

From: Seth Breidbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:11:52 -0400 (EDT)

"Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> keeping track of a mental list?  It's bad enough there are header
> fields which have more restrictive grammar but the same names.  But
> that cannot be avoided.
>
> software to usefor, not write from scratch.  Having ABNF production
> names be different when they are different makes it possible to
> inventory everything that must be reviewed for compliance.

Ideally, ABNF production names that use the same ABNF but have
additional restrictions in the text should be noted some way, for the
same purpose of making it easier to inventory the additional
compliance checks.

I'd suggest some standard way of renaming those productions to
indicate that.

Seth

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:33:13 -0400

> phrase for "obviously I'm right and you're wrong, so we should do it my way".

Yes Henry, "merit" is subjective, and sometimes needs a poll.

Read the discussion on ticket 1084.  There is NO OPPOSITION to this change, and
ONLY SUGGESTIONS for it, which are based on merit.

Actually, there is ONLY ONE PERSON who says it isn't broken and he isn't
planning to fix it.  And IN THE SAME MESSAGE CHARLES ADMITS WE HAVE A DUTY TO
MAKE THE DIFFERENCES FROM RFC2822 CLEAR.  (How he holds contradictory
opinions is amazing.)

Bruce and others already expressed the opinion I had, so I saw no need
to post a /me too.

So it shocked me that a non-reasoned, internally contradictory opinion from
the editor can direct the chair with so much ease.....But Hey, that's
Usefor.

Harald later posted that when he wrote "I saw no consensus for this
change, I am closing it" he meant to write "he was asking for other opinions."

That isn't what he wrote, and I privately thanked him for the clarification,
but the whole thing is ridiculous, as if the posted reasoned opinions of Henry,
Russ, Bruce, and Frank are not enough to outweigh an editor who constantly whines
"But editing is work" when the change in question would take 5 minutes and could
be automatically checked, and would save EVERY IMPLEMENTOR MANY TIMES THAT AMOUNT OF
TIME.

Henry, if this were a contentious issue, then I can see that me calling for
"decisions based on merit" would just be rhetoric for "I'm right, you
are wrong."  In this case it isn't rhetorical.  THERE ARE NO VALID REASONS FOR
AVOIDING THIS CHANGE.

If we had an editor interested in finishing, this #1084 would never have
even been a ticket.  It's just THAT obvious.

Charles wasted more time writing an objection (which actually supported
the contrary opinion) than it would have taken to make the change.

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:35:31 -0400

> renaming productions might introduce errors in the document, IMHO.

I think you have that backwards.  Not renaming productions might introduce
errors in the document.

How else do you run this mess through an ABNF checker but by concatenating
RFC2822 grammar and the USEFOR grammar?

Try doing that with colliding ABNF production names.

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 20:41:30 +0200

Henry Spencer wrote:

> "obviously I'm right and you're wrong,
>  so we should do it my way".

Yes, using this simple principle I got:

msg-id          =>   msg-id          (revised 2822)
id-left         =>   id-local        (subset of 2822)
id-right        =>   id-domain       (subset of 2822)
dot-atom-text   ==   dot-atom-text   (same as 2822)
no-fold-quote   =>   id-quote        (subset of 2822)
no-fold-literal =>   id-literal      (subset of 2822)
mqtext          =>   id-text         (NOT qtext)
mqspecial       =>   id-special      (NOT quoted-pair)
atext           ==   atext           (same as 2822)
mdtext          =>   n/a             (NOT dtext)

                     Bye, Frank

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:44:46 -0400

> different. That's a rather simple rule.....

"Jump 200 feet in the air" is a simple rule too.

We aren't trying to simplify writing USEFOR, we are trying to simplify
implemention of conforming software.

It's bizarre to be having a discussion about optimizing how easy it
is to write something rather than trying to optimize how clear it
is to read.

This isn't supposed to be a diary, written by someone just figuring out
how Usenet works.

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:46:59 +0200

Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:

> Read the discussion on ticket 1084.  There is NO OPPOSITION
> to this change, and ONLY SUGGESTIONS for it, which are based
> on merit.

IIRC I mumbled something in the direction of "maybe possible,
but not necessary and not desirable", and then I was more
interested in the details how to fix the erroneous Date.  If
you represent that as "no opposition" IBTD.

Adding the collected ABNF of MESSFOR and USEFOR and run it
through Bill's parser would of course require different names.

But that's nothing you need in practice as implementor, you
trust that at least the ABNF is correct.  You want to parse
this stuff in your implementation.  A hypothetical combined
ABNF is useless, each valid <msg-id-news> is also a valid
<msg-id-2822>, that's the idea.

For NetNews implementations it's irrelevant that some invalid
<msg-id-news> might be valid <msg-id-2822>.  For a MUA or a
combined UA you'd generate <msg-id-news> because that's always
okay.  So the "real" <msg-id> is <msg-id-news> if you generate
them, or if you check them as Injection-Agent.  Anything else
is dubious, be tolerant in what you accept etc.

I don't see a real need for a combined ABNF, except from the
required validations for each I-D.  But then you can also add
USEFOR after MESSFOR, and remove anything that's redefined.

As Harald said it's easy to find, everything in USEFOR is new.

OTOH I agree that we should minimize the interface, the same
name for header field productions is okay, in the case of the
<msg-id> it's even desirable.

The same name for stuff like <unstructured> where it's only a
minor difference caused by NetNews idiosyncrasies like the
"magic SP" is also okay.

The same name for details like <no-fold-quote> that are _very_
different, even the MESSFOR rules about the "semantic content"
are not more applicable, is fundamentally flawed.

The same name when the old name was an excessively poor choice
like <id-right>, and we have an obvious excuse to change this,
because our syntax is different, is also bad, that should be
<id-domain>.

So that's my opinion, whatever it might be, wrong, minority,
okay, it's different from your, Bruce's, Charles', or Seth's
opinions.

Ignoring the internal rules of <msg-id> for the moment Charles
isn't alone, I also don't like clumsy <unstructured-news> etc.
names.  Above all I want to fix the silly <msg-id-2822>.  Bye

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:20:10 -0700

> even been a ticket.  It's just THAT obvious.

Point of order:

The editor of the USEFOR document is Ken Murchison.

Insulting Ken because of something Charles wrote is .... bizarre.

                   Harald

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 17:20:35 -0400

> Insulting Ken because of something Charles wrote is .... bizarre.

I should not have written that, for a number of reasons.  It is totally
unsupported.

I apologize.

Charles was the author of most of the text of USEFOR, until the split
a year ago.  Much of the text remains his.

I have not observed Ken taking much editorial control over USEFOR,
nor participating in discussion on any topic here recently.

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:17:19 -0700

Forrest J Cavalier <[email-masked]> writes:

> That isn't what he wrote, and I privately thanked him for the
> clarification, but the whole thing is ridiculous, as if the posted
> reasoned opinions of Henry, Russ, Bruce, and Frank are not enough to
> outweigh an editor who constantly whines "But editing is work" when the
> change in question would take 5 minutes and could be automatically
> checked, and would save EVERY IMPLEMENTOR MANY TIMES THAT AMOUNT OF
> TIME.

Well, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I hope it was something
along the lines of "it sounds like a reasonable idea, but I don't really
care a lot."  The problem with renaming productions is that you then have
to make sure that you caught every place where they were referenced in
other productions, and while the additional clarity sounds nice, I'm not
sure that it really ends up accomplishing a tremendous amount.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 12:17:01 GMT

>ONLY SUGGESTIONS for it, which are based on merit.

Not so. I have been consistently opposing such changes (notably in
discussions with Frank concerning <id-left> and <id-right>) for a long
time. It seems even Frank does not want changes on the scale that Bruce
seems to envisage.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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