On 9/9/2010 8:38 PM, Ned Freed wrote:
This was a bad idea when it was first proposed (if I recall correctly) around
ten years ago, and it's still a bad idea.
I strongly disagree.
Whenever you define an alternate representation of something, there will
inevitably be skew between the original representation and the alternate
representation.
This is demonstrably false.
We need to distinguish between alternate syntactic forms, versus alternate
semantic environments. Translating between versions of the former do not need
to lose information. Translating between versions of the latter almost
certainly do. Losing information is about differences in semantics.
As I understand the calendar+xml, it is "merely" a syntactic alternative. To
the extent that it requires information loss when being re-encoded, yes that
should be fixed. But it's not likely to be difficult and the existence of two
syntactic forms is not inherently problematic. (We have lots of examples on the
net of doing this quite nicely, at different layers of Internet architecture.)
As for the more abstract discussion about whether it's good or bad to have an
xml version, I'll strongly suggest that it is best conducted in a real bar bof
with real alcohol. (I'll be supporting its existence, FWIW.) The xml version
is an important fact of life. Let's not pretend otherwise.
It is not the job of the MIME registration process to make political statements
that give preferential treatment to facts of life that some might like more than
other facts of life...
Register the damn thing. The registration form appears to satisfy registration
requirements.
If there are specific problems with the associated spec, pursue them
independently and concretely, please.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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