RE: CQL 2.0 Changes - Terminals/Terminal Aliases

["Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress" <rden@loc.gov>]

Tony - all of this looks good to me, and I am sure to everyone else on the
TC. As far as "preferences" (BOLEAN upper or lower case, etc.) I leave all
that up to you. 

Do you want to: 

(a) send me a new version of the BNF that I can slip into the CQL document;
or
(b) send me specific changes.

I prefer (a).

Thanks. 

--Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Hammond, Tony [mailto:t.hammond@nature.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 6:55 AM
To: 'OASIS SWS TC'
Cc: Denenberg, Ray
Subject: CQL 2.0 Changes - Terminals/Terminal Aliases

Hi:

(On point of agenda order I guess that the CQL discussion should be moved up
ahead of OpenSearch which is a separate doc, I believe.)

There were 3 CQL bugs noted by Adam [1]:

    Q1. reserved names (and or not prox sortby) - not allowed as search term
    Q2. quoted-uri-string - not allowed as search term
    Q3. prefix-name - not allowed as search term

Solutions were proposed by me [2] and agreed by Adam in his following (last)
reply:

    R1. No big deal but for compatibility with 1.2 add boolean/sort-by into
search-term. Propose introducing new non-terminal "reserved-string" to cover
both.
    R2. Treat as non-terminal and expand as basic terminals deferring
semantics to comments
    R3. Ditto #2

Have listed changes below. Main diffs are to change search-term production
in section "B. Search Clauses", and then to split section "I. Terminals"
into (new) section "I. Terminal Aliases" and section "J. Terminals". Diffs
show new sections first followed by old sections.

This accounts for Adam's comments.

I have two specific comments:

    1. Prefer that "Boolean" is lowercased generally in the text- but
especially in the BNF. Realize that it's an ed decision re capitalizing
names but generally highest honours accorded to lowercased names (e.g.
abelian groups, etc.).

    In the BNF anyway it really must be lowercased for readability.

    2. Wonder if the distinction between names and strings is still
maintained. Was trying to relegate strings to terminal end of things.

Aside from that I guess it's good to go - certainly for comment. Still have
lingering doubts over that recursive production "search-clause-group".

One general comment regards implementations. In Mike's "silly season" post
[4] he talks about specifications and implementations and construes it
backwards. Specs precede implementations (are not driven by them). But begs
question about getting spec verified in one or more implementations. Not
sure what OASIS rules are here. I think W3C require a couple independent
working implementations. Are we going to need something similar re CQL
parser?

Must say that this has been frustrating for me and if I'd had more knowledge
and/or time would have built my own parser to verify the BNF (and especially
need for - or not - recursive productions.)

Cheers,

Tony


[1] http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1006&L=zng&T=0&P=2324
[2] http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1006&L=zng&T=0&P=4788
[3] http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1006&L=zng&T=0&P=4877
[4] http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1009&L=zng&T=0&P=465

+++ NEW +++
  ; B. Search Clauses

  search-term    =   simple-string / quoted-string / reserved-string

+++ /NEW +++

+++ OLD +++
  ; B. Search Clauses

  search-term    =   simple-string / quoted-string

+++ /OLD +++


+++ NEW +++
  ; I. Terminal Aliases

  prefix-name   =   simple-string

    ; Prefix (simple-name) and simple-name with "." separator.
    ;
    ; No whitespace allowed before or after the dot character
    ; (".")   
 
  quoted-uri-string   =   quoted-string

    ; Double quotes enclosing a URI string.
    ;
    ; RFC 3986 (STD 66) specifies the allowed characters
    ; for a URI which all fall within the printable subset of
    ; US-ASCII.   

  reserved-string   =   boolean / sort-by

  simple-name   =   simple-string


  ; J. Terminals   

  quoted-string   =

    ; Double quotes enclosing a sequence of any characters
    ; except double quote unless preceded by a backslash
    ; character ("\").
    ;
    ; Backslash escapes the character following it. The
    ; surrounding double quotes are not included in the value.

  simple-string   =

    ; Any sequence of non-whitespace characters that does not
    ; include any of the following graphic characters:
    :
    ;      " ( ) / < = >
+++ /NEW +++




+++ OLD +++
  ; I. Terminals   

  prefix-name   =   prefix "." simple-name

    ; No whitespace allowed before or after the dot character
    ; (".")   
 
  quoted-uri-string   =

    ; Double quotes enclosing a URI string.
    ;
    ; RFC 3986 (STD 66) specifies the allowed characters
    ; for a URI which all fall within the printable subset of
    ; US-ASCII.   

  quoted-string   =

    ; Double quotes enclosing a sequence of any characters
    ; except double quote unless preceded by a backslash
    ; character ("\").
    ;
    ; Backslash escapes the character following it. The
    ; surrounding double quotes are not included in the value.

  simple-name   =   simple-string

  simple-string   =

    ; Any sequence of non-whitespace characters that does not
    ; include any of the following graphic characters:
    :
    ;      " ( ) / < = >
+++ /OLD +++




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