Oh yes, exactly! That was the note I was referring to obliquely. They're right, in a technical sense, but "wrong" (subjectively in some cases) when it comes to designing tools that work with URI Templates... It's absolutely a smart enough bunch of folks to get the tradeoffs, I just don't envy having to decide them. Even if, on this occasion, I may have argued more.

(Of course, a lot of standards, and this is one, are reflections, and unifications, of existing implicit standards. People had already started using some of these features, so they couldn't really drop them, and still see adoption. Not an easy balance!)