From: Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk (qrczak@knm.org.pl)
Date: Wed Jan 26 2005 - 13:07:18 CST
Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
> This change appear to break backwards compatibility and normalization
> stability. The PR29 text suggest that the problematic sequences do
> not occur naturally. My question then is: why break normalization
> stability over something that doesn't appear to be a practical
> problem?
Because normalizations should be idempotent. This was always intended,
the old specification had a bug.
Some implementations actually used the literal meaning, and some used
the intended meaning (perhaps by accident, I don't know). It makes no
sense to add the bug now to all implementations which used to have it
fixed.
It happens that it affected my implementation of normalization that
I've made for my language. I already fixed it. Are you saying that I
should break it again?
> However, I am concerned that normalization stability is given so
> little weight that it is violated even for situations that doesn't
> appear to have practical consequences.
I am more concerned with maintaining bugs forever in the name of
stability.
If this particular change can have practical consequence, it's more
probable that something will break with the old definition (because
a subsystem relied on idempotency) than with the new one.
--
__("< Marcin Kowalczyk
\__/ qrczak@knm.org.pl
^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/
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