{"action":"closed","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/issues/65","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/issues/65/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/issues/65/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/issues/65/events","html_url":"https://github.com/samtools/hts-specs/issues/65","id":56595846,"number":65,"title":"Questions raised by the proposed VCFv4.3 encoding changes","user":{"login":"bioinformed","id":1261247,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1261247?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed","html_url":"https://github.com/bioinformed","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/bioinformed/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/labels/vcf","name":"vcf","color":"009800"}],"state":"closed","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/milestones/1","html_url":"https://github.com/samtools/hts-specs/milestones/VCF-4.3","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/samtools/hts-specs/milestones/1/labels","id":1102104,"number":1,"title":"VCF-4.3","description":"Issues that need to be resolved one way or the other before 4.3 is ratified.","creator":{"login":"jmarshall","id":70921,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/70921?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall","html_url":"https://github.com/jmarshall","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jmarshall/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"open_issues":2,"closed_issues":5,"state":"open","created_at":"2015-05-08T16:21:45Z","updated_at":"2015-06-11T14:50:23Z","due_on":null,"closed_at":null},"comments":1,"created_at":"2015-02-04T22:12:34Z","updated_at":"2015-06-11T14:50:23Z","closed_at":"2015-06-11T14:50:23Z","body":"I'm in favor of the change to make VCF encoding UTF-8 and to add URL/percent encoding of INFO and FORMAT values.  However, these changes do raise some practical issues:\r\n\r\n1. UTF-8 encoding is not propagated to BCF.  The draft spec continues to refer to ASCII encoded strings, which would require application of percent coding to store UTF-8 strings.  The definition of Character still states that, \"[a]s with Strings, UNICODE characters are not supported.\" Should the definition of scalar Character encoding be changed to support code points < 127 and String encoding be changed to unrestricted UTF-8?\r\n\r\n2. URL/percent coding is defined in multiple standards, some only supporting ASCII, some any 8-bit character set, and different versions for UTF-8 and other multi-byte encodings.  It would be helpful if the specs referred to a specific standard for URL/percent coding (e.g. RFC 3986 or the variant that encodes higher code points as  %uxxxx as in ECMA-262)."}}