Re: Should the IETF be condoning, even promoting, BOM pollution?

Adam Roach <adam@xxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 18 Sep 2017 17:13:01 -0500



    On 9/18/17 16:59, Ted Lemon wrote:

    
      On Sep 18, 2017, at 5:51 PM, Adam Roach <adam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
      wrote:
      
        
          I don't want to get in a
              protracted argument either, but I find your assertion that
              "it does cause problems" to be lacking concrete examples.
              Can you provide an existence proof of one such example? If
              you're right, it shouldn't be too hard.

          
      I'm taking Carsten at his word: he described some
        significant problems.
      

    No, he described some significant (and not entirely unjustified)
      concerns. His description of the actual example I ask for, he
      provided nearly nothing.

    
    To wit: he described exactly one tool -- written by Martin
      Thomson -- making the wrong guess between two variants of markup.
      That's not nothing, but I expect that even Martin would concede
      that it was a pretty ugly and fragile hack to start with (e.g.,
      both file formats would legally allow files to start with two
      linefeeds, and cause the tool to fail in the same way as a BOM
      does).
    /a