[whatwg] An alternative approach to section 9 of Mime Sniffing

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Peter Occil <poccil14 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Explain further why you don't recommend ABNF for this case.

We don't recommend ABNF in general because often ABNF results in a
mismatch between prescribed and actual processing. E.g. Content-Type
is defined as an ABNF and technically "text/html;" does not match that
ABNF, but everyone (logically) processes that as "text/html" without
parameters.

It's much better to define the actual processing so implementers are
less inclined to take shortcuts when implementing (test suites also
help, but they're typically written way-after-the-fact).


> You should also explain whether another change to make section 9 more readable is
> appropriate (though it currently is relatively readable as is).

I'll leave that to Gordon.


--
http://annevankesteren.nl/