Re: NEW ISSUE: Define "ought to"

[cowwoc <[e-mail]>]

On 30/07/2013 11:29 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 2013-07-30 17:18, cowwoc wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>      According to
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2013JulSep/0183.html:
>>
>> The WG practice has been to replace overly restrictive
>> SHOULD with a phrase that lacks the normative strictness while still
>> conveying some importance for the instruction - "ought to".
>>
>>      I'd like to propose explicitly defining "ought to" alongside
>> "SHOULD" because it is not clear what the practical difference is
>> between the two. "ought to" is actually a synonym of "should", see
>> http://thesaurus.com/browse/ought+to and 
>> http://thesaurus.com/browse/should
>>
>>      It seems that you meant for "ought to" to lie somewhere between
>> "MAY" and "SHOULD" but I don't think you're gaining anything by not
>> defining exactly what it means, especially for people whose English is
>> not their first language.
>>
>>      Please consider:
>>
>>  1. Replacing "ought to" with a word that is not a synonym of SHOULD,
>>     unless you mean SHOULD in which case you should use SHOULD :)
>>  2. Defining "ought to" explicitly at the top of the document.
>>
>> Thank you :)
>> Gili
>
> The point being that "ought to" being just prose, while "SHOULD" being 
> defined by RFC 2119. Both of them having roughly the same meaning in 
> English sounds absolutely right to me.

Julian,

     I understand the "legal" difference between the two but your reply 
didn't actually explain the benefit of using "ought to" instead of 
"SHOULD" (especially in light of the fact that the former causes confusion).

Gili