From: Paul Overell (paulo@turnpike.com)
Date: Mon Feb 11 2002 - 03:47:13 CST
In message <Gr8Cpq.I1y@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>, Charles Lindsey
<chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes
>In <Gr09nL.AHI@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) writes:
>
>
>>In <7cKPhbFkxmW8QAmq@pillar.turnpike.com> Paul Overell
>><paulo@turnpike.com> writes:
>
>>>I don't want to get into a discussion of the various merits of different
>>>syntactic meta-languages. ABNF may not be perfect but it has become the
>>>syntactic meta-language of choice for RFCs, it is a proposed standard.
>>>We should use it as is, without extensions. The above is not ABNF.
>
>>No, it is not strict ABNF, but it has been in the draft for two, maybe
>>three, years now, and this is the first time somebody has complained. Does
>>anybody else on this list want this to be reviewed?
>
>Nobody has responded to this,
:(
> so I propose to leave the mechanism in the
>draft, but with a few tweaks in response to this discussion.
>
One vote each then :)
My objections stand.
The syntax is not ABNF.
The syntax is incomplete.
Formal syntax is hard enough to read as it is, making readers jump
through hoops to expand templates just makes it harder.
The Internet is plagued by implementors who code to examples rather than
to the formal syntax. Anything that makes the formal syntax harder to
read will just make this problem worse.
> Expires-content = date-time
> Expires-name = "Expires"
Is not as clear (or as succinct) as
Expires = "Expires:" SP date-time
or even
Expires = "Expires: " date-time
Regards
-- Paul Overell T U R N P I K E