Bug#647645: More precise reference to ASCII characters, and few phrasing issues
Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
> For the reference to ASCII characters and is phrasing, the current one
> uses a similar wording as RFC 5322 §2.2, quoted below.
> Header fields are lines beginning with a field name, followed by a
> colon (":"), followed by a field body, and terminated by CRLF. A
> field name MUST be composed of printable US-ASCII characters (i.e.,
> characters that have values between 33 and 126, inclusive), except
> colon.
> I did not realise that this definition of printable characters
> contradicts other definitions (and the Wikipedia).
Yeah, me either. How annoying.
> I personally find ‘[!-~]’ a bit dry, and I think there is a benefit
> calling the characters by their name, as it allows searches through the
> document. Given that the Policy uses only ‘hash’, but not ‘pound’,
> ‘numbersign’ nor ‘octothorpe’, I propose to call the # character by this
> name, as it is its first occurence in Chapter 5. So how about the
> following:
> Each paragraph consists of a series of data fields; each
> field consists of the field name, followed by a colon and
> then the data/value associated with that field. The field
> name MUST be composed of US-ASCII characters excluding
> control characters, space and colon (i.e., characters in the
> ranges 33–57 and 59–126, inclusive). In addition, they
> MUST NOT begin with a hash character (<tt>#</tt>).
> By the way, is ‘consists of a series of data fields’ gramatically
> correct ?
Yup, seems fine to me.
Here's what I applied for the next release, which incorporated some
further feedback on wording and which also reformats things a bit to
hopefully be clearer.
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index 0121da5..465a129 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -2499,18 +2499,21 @@ endif
</p>
<p>
- Each paragraph consists of a series of data fields; each
- field consists of the field name, followed by a colon and
- then the data/value associated with that field. The field
- name is composed of printable ASCII characters (i.e.,
- characters that have values between 33 and 126, inclusive)
- except colon and must not with a begin with #. The
- field ends at the end of the line or at the end of the
- last continuation line (see below). Horizontal whitespace
- (spaces and tabs) may occur immediately before or after the
- value and is ignored there; it is conventional to put a
- single space after the colon. For example, a field might
- be:
+ Each paragraph consists of a series of data fields. Each field
+ consists of the field name followed by a colon and then the
+ data/value associated with that field. The field name is
+ composed of US-ASCII characters excluding control characters,
+ space, and colon (i.e., characters in the ranges 33-57 and
+ 59-126, inclusive). Field names must not begin with the comment
+ character, <tt>#</tt>.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ The field ends at the end of the line or at the end of the last
+ continuation line (see below). Horizontal whitespace (spaces
+ and tabs) may occur immediately before or after the value and is
+ ignored there; it is conventional to put a single space after
+ the colon. For example, a field might be:
<example compact="compact">
Package: libc6
</example>
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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