Accumulated Feedback on PRI #523

This page is a compilation of formal public feedback received so far. See Feedback for further information on this issue, how to discuss it, and how to provide feedback.

Date/Time: Tue July 01 18:53:21 PDT 2025
ReportID: ID20250701185321
Name: Mark Davis
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: Improve readability of Unicode Set spec

523	Proposed Draft UTS #61, Unicode Set Notation	2025.07.01	UTC
I think that https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr61/ would be more readable if it used shorter names for optional-white-space and white-space,. In message format, for example, o and s are used, such as:

literal-expression = "{" o literal [s function] *(s attribute) o "}"
I find that easier to read than if it were written with the long names:

literal-expression = "{" optional-white-space literal [white-space function] *(white-space attribute) optional-white-space "}"
where the whitespace obscures the meat of the syntax. The main place that would benefit would be:

   bracketed-element ⩴ { optional-white-space string-element optional-white-space }
   string-literal ⩴
   { optional-white-space }
   { optional-white-space string-elements optional-white-space }
   string-element ⩴
   bracketed-literal-element escaped-element named-element
   string-elements ⩴
   string-element optional-white-space string-element
   string-elements optional-white-space string-element

which could become

   bracketed-element ⩴ { o string-element o }
   string-literal ⩴ { o } { o string-elements o }
   string-element ⩴ bracketed-literal-element escaped-element named-element
   string-elements ⩴ string-element o string-element string-elements o string-element

Question: the last line would also be simpler and easier to understand as the following.

  string-elements ⩴ string-element ( o string-element )* // or ABNF equivalent

I recall though that the spec is using the less-readable format to be more easily parsable by tooling.

"ows" and "ws" would also be more readable than optional-white-space and white-space, though not quite as pithy.