Subject: [Jsonpath] Merging I-Ds

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 10:49:05 +0000

On Sun, 2020-10-25 at 00:24 +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> I think by the time of the meeting we should have proposals ready to
discuss:
> ...
> * a proposal for a working draft (probably by merging/coming up with
> a plan to merge the two I-Ds we already have).  Clearly, the authors
> are in a position to take the initiative here, but we shouldn’t
> really do something the WG doesn’t like.

In terms of merging the two I-Ds, the WG has a few options. We could
start from a clean slate and use the curent I-Ds as source material or
we could pick one of the I-Ds as a base and then merge in portions of
the other.

The approach we've taken with [1] is to start with a clean slate and
then carefully introduce sections of text using pull requests with
reviewers distinct from authors. The aim was to maintain (a) consensus
over the content, (b) intellectual control, and (c) precision.

We've tried to stick to a non-contentious subset of JSONPath so that
the I-D can easily be adopted by the WG as a starting point, although
the WG may prefer to start from scratch. We've been logging issues for
later discussion in the WG.

We have also been developing a Compliance Test Suite ([CTS]) and
Reference Implementation ([RI]) in parallel with the spec work and have
made these lag strictly behind the spec so that the spec remains the
normative definition.

I see the main benefits of [2] as continuity with Gössner's original
article and providing the implicit goal of encompassing all the
features in the scope of the work. A downside of using [2] as a
starting point would be that it's tricky to retrofit precision.

Regards,
Glyn

[1] https://jsonpath-standard.github.io/internet-draft/

[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-goessner-dispatch-jsonpath-00

[CTS] 
https://github.com/jsonpath-standard/jsonpath-reference-implementation/blob/main/tests/cts.json
(this should move to its own repo for ease of consumption)

[RI] 
https://github.com/jsonpath-standard/jsonpath-reference-implementation

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 13:57:26 +0100

> starting point would be that it's tricky to retrofit precision.

Right.  But a specification does not need to jump heads-first into the precise part; I see the existing draft mainly as introductory material that allows the reader to see the forest before climbing the individual trees.

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 13:03:54 +0000

On Mon, 2020-10-26 at 13:57 +0100, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> Right.  But a specification does not need to jump heads-first into
> the precise part; I see the existing draft mainly as introductory
> material that allows the reader to see the forest before climbing the
> individual trees.

Good point - I'm all for making the spec understandable.