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Subject: RE: [xri] Issue 1: Clarifying * Semantics


I was addressing Drummond's point about the difficulty of parsing. I
just pointed out that the difference in complexity of an XRI parser is
negligible between the current and the proposed syntax. Do you disagree
with that?

As to the clarification of : as a separator, I think there's a
misunderstanding here. Colon is _always_ a subsegment separator. In
xri:@:1010, there are two subsegments, @ and 1010. In xri:@example there
are two subsegments, @ and example. Under both the current syntax and
the new proposal, there's an implied * between @ and example in
xri:@example. If that genuinely confuses users (which I don't think it
does, it's simply an ignorable technicality), then we'd have to make it
explicit as xri:@*example. That's what I was pointing out (somewhat
facetiously) in my second comment below.

Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fen Labalme [mailto:fen@idcommons.org]
> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 10:38 AM
> To: Dave McAlpin
> Cc: xri@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [xri] Issue 1: Clarifying * Semantics
> 
> Dave McAlpin wrote:
> > As we've pointed out before, the thing that makes parsing and
> > interpreting XRIs difficult is cross-references. The difference
between
> > the two options we're currently discussing is negligible.
> 
> While I agree that cross-references are the truly hard part, the
proposed
> simplification is *not* negligible.  Rather, the change greatly
clarifies
> the
> meanings of : and *.  The first (an initial colon) becomes a simple
> decorator
> (I like that term) that denotes persistence - it is no longer
*sometimes*
> a
> separator.  The second (an initial star) now acts simply as a
separator,
> and
> no longer must be implied in places that it does not appear.
> 
> > As for simplification of the rules, if implied * is confusing let's
just
> > require it. In other words, keep the current interpretation of * and
> > change xri:@example/foo to xri:@*example/*foo, comparable to
xri:@:3/:4.
> > This is a much simpler change and has the benefits you mention
below.
> 
> This would be dreadful.  Don't forget that the reason we're changing
from
> dot
> to star is for better human readability!
> 
> Fen


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