RFC Proposal: Directives belong to the stream and not a document

[eemeli]

The YAML 1.1 spec defines a stream as consisting of a series of documents, each of which "may be preceded by a series of directives." Documents after the first (l-next-document) have this additional specification:

If the document specifies no directives, it is parsed using the same settings as the previous document. If the document does specify any directives, all directives of previous documents, if any, are ignored.

In the YAML 1.2 spec, a document in a stream "is completely independent from the rest". This version of the spec does not define an l-next-document construct, but does define an l-directive-document as starting "with some directives".

The complete independence of documents from each other severely limits the usability of multi-document streams, in particular with respect to directives. The YAML 1.1 implementation should be returned to, while clarifying the relationship between documents and directives.