Subject: [VCARDDAV] syntax for property value

From: Arnaud Quillaud <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:42:43 +0100

Hello,

Section 4 of http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-15 
defines the ABNF for property values. We have:

<<

      text = *VALUE-CHAR

      text-list = *TEXT-LIST-CHAR *("," *TEXT-LIST-CHAR)

      TEXT-LIST-CHAR = "\\" / "\," / "\n"
                     /<any VALUE-CHAR except , or \>
         ; Backslashes, commas, and newlines must be encoded.

where VALUE-CHAR is defined in 3.2 as:

<<

    VALUE-CHAR = WSP / VCHAR / NON-ASCII
      ; Any textual character

Given the distinction between VALUE-CHAR and TEXT-LIST-CHAR, it leads me 
into thinking that "raw" commas or backslashes are OK in simple text 
properties.

In the meantime, section 3.3 (Property Value Escaping) and the example 
in section 4.1 (TEXT) make it pretty clear that values of type text 
should have backslashes, commas and newlines encoded.

In other words, I read it more as something like:
<<

      VALUE-CHAR = WSP / "\\" / "\," / "\n"
	/<any VCHAR except , or \>
  	/ NON-ASCII
      ; Any textual character
      ; Backslashes, commas, and newlines must be encoded.

      text = *VALUE-CHAR

      text-list = *VALUE-CHAR *("," *VALUE-CHAR)

On the same topic, why are list-component and list-component-value not 
listed in Section 4 when text-list is listed ?

Thanks,

Arnaud Quillaud

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:01:48 -0500

>      text-list = *VALUE-CHAR *("," *VALUE-CHAR)

I'm having difficulty understanding what your proposal is...

> listed in Section 4 when text-list is listed ?

Oversight. I'll move them in the next revision.

Thanks,
Simon
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---

From: Arnaud Quillaud <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:29:18 +0100

> I'm having difficulty understanding what your proposal is...
OK. Maybe I should not venture into trying to fix the ABNF. Instead I'll 
just focus on what I find unclear:

In section 4, the text value is defined as a VALUE-CHAR where VALUE-CHAR 
can be any character, including backslash, comma or newline.
This contradicts with section 3.3 and section 4.1 where it is mentioned 
that backslash, comma and newline need to be encoded in text values.

Arnaud Quillaud