Re: [MacPerl-Modules] Re: Need authoritative Apple refs for EOL == CR

[Arved Sandstrom <Arved_37@chebucto.ns.ca>]

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Paul J. Schinder wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 02, 1999 at 06:11:43AM -0400, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> } 
> } There will be some serious revision of tests aand scripts and what have
> } you in order to make them portable, which by Perl's def'n of \n these
> } folks will have to do. I anticipate that they will want some solid
> } evidence, like Chris and David located, that the MacOS line-end is indeed
> } \015, before they change their mindset.
> 
> But that's simply nuts.  These arrogant clowns won't simply believe a
> regular MacOS user about end-of-line?  They won't take the few minutes
> it takes to verify this?  (You could, for example, ftp an official
> Apple SimpleText document in binary mode if they can't find a Mac.)
> 
Well, it may come to that. :-) I don't want to give the impression that
anyone party to this Perl-XML discussion has actually come out and said
they don't believe that \n != \xA on Macs. So, as I stated above, I asked
for assistance in getting some refs in _anticipation_ of people asking for
hard proof. It may or may not be requested.

Most of the folks involved in this discussion are in my time zone give or
take 4 hours or so. A lot of the real nitty-gritty got hashed out
yesterday, but I'd bet that after last-night's sleep the implications of
this line-end thing are maybe starting to sink in. It's been really
convenient for the Unix types up to now that are writing and using Perl
XML modules; XML EOL's match Unix EOL's, so they've beem writing module
tests and what have you with careless abandon, comparing returned XML to
original content, with not a thought that this ain't gonna work on all
OS's.

It's been rather revealing, also, to find out that when the XML spec was
done up, that they decided, let's crunch all line-ends into \xA, because
that's \n, and hence it'll be handy for everyone. It's not that there
wasn't an awareness that \xD is EOL on Macs, and \xD\xA on Windows, but I
really get the impression that they thought that \n == \xA on *all*
systems, but that Macs use \r for EOL, and Windows uses \r\n.

So it seems to me that the XML folks thought that, OK, as long as the Mac
programmer parses XML using \n, he or she is OK. Basically a
misunderstanding: they thought that \n == \xA, when actually \n ==
'logical newline'.

> Maybe it's my training as a scientist, but what end-of-line is used is
> an empirical fact that is easily determined by experiment.  There's no
> need for documentation here.  I'd be hard pressed to find a document
> that says that Unix uses \012, and it'd be a waste of my time, because
> it's a matter of seconds to type "od -a /etc/passwd" and look.
> (Kernighan and Ritchie may say that, but K & R isn't a description of
> Unix, and K & R is wrong about what \n means.)

Well, I agree. My background is physics, and I'm pretty happy with
preponderance of proof myself. I don't think *I* could easily locate a
hypothetical doc that says Unix NL == \012 either.

One reason I'm pre-arming myself with refs and docs is this: once you've
been doing XML for just a little while (it doesn't take more than a few
weeks), you quickly realize that the XML working groups and their W3C
counterparts are worse than gov't when it comes to generating paper. It
appears that they can't decide whether to go to the bathroom without
forming a Steering Committee, establishing a few spinoff Working Groups,
which then generate Technical Notes, probably with Official Errata, all of
which then comes together as a Recommendation. :-)

Most of the Perl+XML guys aren't this anal. They're actually trying to
usefully implement XML. But this discussion went over into the realm of
"Is XML flawed?", there's a few straight-XML types involved, and like I
say, I have a hunch that *they* will ultimately want paper. That's
assuming that they don't just ignore the whole problem.

Arved




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