[Tagging] Wiki Edit War on using/avoiding semicolon lists

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 22/01/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> a minor issue with semicolon separated lists: we don't have yet defined how
> to escape actual semicolons in values.

To me, that is actually a major issue (putting blank fields in the same basket).

Defining how litteral semicolons and blank fields should be
represented isn't that hard. But making sure that consumers (let alone
editors) all follow whatever algorythm we'd end up choosing is damn
near impossible. Even if you wave your magik wand and convert all
programs today, tomorrow 10 new program will be writen that just uses
split(value,';') because that's the obvious implementation.

That impossibility is why I'm convinced that semicolons as the only
way to support multiple values is a very bad idea, despite being often
nicer to look at. They're fine to use for simple cases, but not for
anything complex or wide-ranging.

Contrast semicolons with the key_<number> scheme, which can safely be
implemented universally for all keys by a consumer, or the various
key:subkey schemes which can present more subtle information. And
contrary to semicolons, both those schemes downgrade gracefuly when
the consumer doesn't handle multiple-value schemes.