[ietf-types removed to spare those who just want to read type applications.]
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.
I'm not convinced that there is a difference in practice between the two.
Different syntactic forms tend to get used in different environments, and to
adapt to the requirements/conventions of those environments.
calendar+xml is intended to be merely a syntactic alternative. I just don't
believe it is likely to stay that way.
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.)
please cite specific examples. it might be instructive to see why they work or
don't work well.
the best one that immediately comes to mind is raw IP vs. PPP with header
compression. I think it works because the latter representation is only used
on the wire between two endpoints of a network link. And if it fails to
faithfully reproduce the packet, it's very clear where the problem is.
(there's no argument about which representation is correct - the original
packet is always correct.).
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.)
I had to read that twice. For a second I thought you were offering to support
the existence of alcohol for the bar bof.
The xml version is an important fact of life. Let's not pretend otherwise.
My standard response whenever anyone cites anything as "reality" or a "fact of
life", is that that's what people always say when they can't cite any technical
justification.
Keith
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