Hi.

That seems to be a reasonable outcome... sorry it took a while to get
there and thanks for your forbearance.

Regards,
Elwyn


On Thu, 2013-12-19 at 18:17 +0200, Jari Arkko wrote:
> I would be very happy with this. And again, I only wanted to briefly discuss 
> this, so I don't want to hold the document even if you do not add something. 
> But I like the addition, and it also seems to match my understanding of the 
> real situation. 
> 
> Jari
> 
> On Dec 19, 2013, at 6:16 PM, Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Or to be more in tune with the language in the rest of the spec.  “JSON 
> > parsing library implementations have been observed to differ as to whether 
> > or not they make information as to the ordering of object members 
> > available; therefore, implementations whose behavior does not depend on 
> > object ordering will be interoperable in the sense that they will not be 
> > affected by these differences.”
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote:
> > We could a one-sentence paragraph to the end of 4: “Implementations also 
> > differ as to whether or not they make the order of object members available 
> > to receiving software.”
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Jari Arkko <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Elwyn: thank you for your careful review (as always!) of specifications. 
> > And thank you Tim and Paul considering the input.
> > 
> > But maybe a little bit of explanation about the role of Gen-ART review is 
> > in order. The IETF produces very high-quality specifications. The way that 
> > we achieve that is through multiple mechanisms, from having the expert 
> > people to careful WG processes and broad review. The Gen-ART reviews are 
> > exactly that, reviews. I use them as a way to decide if there are serious 
> > enough problems in the document that it warrants me to read it in more 
> > detail and/or possibly raise an issue in the IESG review. But they are also 
> > reviews, and have components (e.g. editorial suggestions) that document 
> > authors and working groups may consider and take into account. And often 
> > do. And the reviewers, being responsible, usually are willing to clarify 
> > and discuss their comments; it is not that they necessarily are personally 
> > after anything, but they are providing input to you. It is a valuable 
> > service to us all. But the WG is still in charge of the operations, or if, 
> > there's a serious enough problem, then I will raise a Discuss.
> > 
> > In this case, I do agree with the first editorial suggestion of being 
> > explicit about the base (even if it is clearer in the ABNF). But it is your 
> > job to determine if you think the change is worthwhile and correct.
> > 
> > Then there are issues that we might raise that are truly problematic, and 
> > some that are potentially problematic. I think the ordering issue could be 
> > seen in the latter category (and I have a similar user perspective as 
> > Elwyn). But if the WG/chair has a good explanation of the situation (e.g., 
> > we've discussed this and the current text is the compromise that was 
> > reached), that is often fine. I think so too in this case. Then again I 
> > actually read Elwyn's comment in a slightly different light. Calling for 
> > clarity on whether there's an agreement on the ordered/unordered nature of 
> > the set. Obviously, bits are in a particular order on the wire, but the 
> > argument you WG has had is probably on the semantics of what that means; 
> > and this is a software issue. Given two same but differently ordered 
> > inputs, does the software produce "equivalent" object. Obviously there are 
> > multiple ways of implementing this, and I fully understand why the question 
> > is non-trivial for the WG.
> > 
> > Personally, I would note the lack of universal agreement on this on the 
> > document. Maybe worthwhile some discussion on the upcoming IESG telechat… 
> > but at the same time I at least am not interested in pushing the WG to 
> > *solve* the agreement or even to entertain lengthy debates. Running code 
> > trumps other concerns in this case, IMO.
> > 
> > Jari
> > 
> > On Dec 18, 2013, at 3:04 AM, Paul Hoffman <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Dec 17, 2013, at 4:52 PM, Elwyn Davies <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > >> I am coming at it from the perspective of a user.  When I was first
> > >> doing things with JSON, I could not find anything that told me either
> > >> that array elements could be anything or that object order didn't
> > >> mattter.
> > >
> > > You noted earlier the issue with "array elements could be anything", and 
> > > based on that, we added words to that effect. We cannot say "object order 
> > > didn't matter" because it does for some parsers.
> > >
> > >> This wasted time for me and affected the code I was writing.
> > >
> > > Correct. If RFC 4627 had been written more carefully, this would not be a 
> > > problem. It wasn't written carefully in a number of areas that affect 
> > > interoperability, as we note (as politely as possible) throughout the 
> > > document at hand.
> > >
> > > It sounds like you are chafing against the charter, which prohibits us 
> > > from making significant changes that will break implementations that made 
> > > different guesses about what the sloppy parts of RFC 4627 meant. Jari can 
> > > decide if that is significant enough to send the document back to the WG 
> > > for this (and at least three other areas) where we were forced to come up 
> > > with "if you do X you will most likely be interoperable" wording, and 
> > > have us make breaking changes to the new document. I hope that doesn't 
> > > happen.
> > >
> > >> There are quite a lot of potential users.
> > >
> > > Certainly. And that is the motivator for the wording that we added, 
> > > instead of just moving RFC 4627 to standards track with no warning about 
> > > the sloppiness.
> > >
> > > --Paul Hoffman
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
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