Reviewing RC1b

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@onename.com>]

Editors,
 
I just uploaded RC1b to the Editor's SC for review by the editors before
posting as RC2 to the main TC (ideally RC2 is final final before the
vote, so I want us all to review it before posting). For ease of review,
EVERY change (edit or addition) is commented, so you can just open the
comment window and click each comment to review.
 
Here are the main thrusts:
 
1) Eagle-eye Nat did a great job of: a) providing the example of ASCII
char sequences that are non-legal UTF-8, and b) proofing the spec (he
caught the missing dots in some of the resolution examples).
 
2) In discussing the $! metadata issue with me on Friday, Gabe brought
up the issue of "canonicalization" of XRIs, and we both realized that
this was a better way to deal with the whole issue of what we had been
calling "optional syntax". So I added a definition of canonical form,
changed the title of that section with 2.4, and reordered it to come
first.
 
3) After Gabe's and my conversation about $!, I added a section called
"Encoding Presentation Metadata" that is patterned after the "Encoding
Non-UTF-8 Language and Font Metadata" section. Note that I added this
section BEFORE the "Transforming XRIs into IRIs and URIs" section
because it deals with a higher-level concept, namely "Transforming
Display Strings into XRIs". In other words, the purpose of $! is
capturing display metadata that otherwise may be lost when converting a
display string into a valid XRI in escaped normal form. This metadata,
which can address difficult issues we've been discussing like spaces,
case, and punctuation, can be lost DURING the transformation into
escaped normal form depending on an authority's XRI normalization rules
(which might, for example, disallow even %20 encoded spaces or capital
letter). So my reasoning was that if this data needed to be retained for
later display, it needed to be captured into a $! cross-reference at
that juncture.
 
(Note to Gabe: I realized I couldn't add $f and $l to the $! space
because they ARE significant in comparision, while $! metadata is not.
That's another reason I added this section prior to the "Transforming
XRIs into IRIs and URIs" section.)
 
Please review all these edits, especially this new section, and post any
feedback. To my knowledge, this is the only remaining ISSUE in RC1b.
With Nat's outstanding tasks done, everything else is strictly a matter
of reviewing new or added wording. So if we can close this issue by COB
TOMORROW, MONDAY, then I will post RC2 (incorporating any final feedback
on these edits and any other feedback) Tuesday morning.
 
Note that I will be offline from about 9am - 4pm tomorrow, but during
that time you can get me on my cell, 206.618.8530.
 
=Drummond