ISSUE: delimited string under-specified

[Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>]

Dave,

Please record this question/issue.  It is a small leftover from a
previous thread -- I just want to make sure it doesn't get lost. 
(No time to deal with it right now.)

Two parts:  More specification is needed in the document, for valid
characters in delimited strings (5.5); and, there is a question needs
answering, about escaping "problematic" characters within
delimited strings.

Valid characters in delimited strings:
----------
In 5.5, there is a note, "need a link for ValidChar". That
character set would be the union of:

1.) valid characters of 'name' ApsAttr

2.) valid characters occurring in linkuri ApsAttr, of 3 subparts:

a. URI (or IRI, if we should decide to go that way)

b. 'linkTitle'

c. behavior

3.) valid characters for "number" (in 'region').

Escaping characters in delimited strings:
----------
Does #2b present us with any problems? E.g., what would be the JS call
for setAppStructureAttr for this 'linkuri'?

-- uri: http://www.itedo.com/tc.cgm

-- title: Benoit's test

-- behavior: _replace

For the moment, ignoring APOSTROPHE in Benoit's,
Opt-a (JS string parameter is APOSTROPHE enclosed):  
setAppStructureAttr('"http://www.itedo.com/tc.cgm" 
"Benoit's test"  "_replace"')
Opt-b (JS string parameter is QUOTE enclosed):
setAppStructureAttr("'http://www.itedo.com/tc.cgm' 
'Benoit's test'  '_replace'")

In Opt-a, the APOSTROPHE in Benoit's interacts with the JS
parameter-enclosing APOSTROPHEs, so it must be JS-escaped: 
Benoit\'s.

In Opt-b, all of the APOSTROPHEs including Benoit's simply look like
characters in the QUOTE-enclosed JS string parameter.  But DOM
implementation would have trouble with Benoit's.

So Opt-a is usable (and necessary) in this example.  If the 'title'
were changed to:  
title:  Viewer says, "invalid"  
then Opt-b would be usable (and necessary), with QUOTE escaping in the
title:  \"invalid\" 

If the title needed to contain both an APOSTROPHE and a QUOTE ... well,
neither Opt-a nor Opt-b works.  I think we couldn't avoid ambiguous
situation at DOM implementation (parsing) level.

Question:  Do we need a DOM-specific escaping rule in our definition
of delimited string (5.5)?  E.g., In Opt-a, JS would pass
Benoit\\\'s to the DOM implementation as Benoit\'s, and the rule at the
DOM implementation level could be that \ is the escaping character. 

Or ... shall we just document a limitation that your data in delimited
strings ('name', 'linkuri', ...) cannot contain *both* QUOTE and
APOSTROPHE data?

-Lofton.