Re: Uppercase question for RFC2119 words

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

> one minor tweak

A fine tweak.  I'll write it up and pass it to a few people before I
post the I-D.

I'd rather do it as an update to 2119, rather than a complete
revision, even though 2119 is so short, for two reasons:

1. I don't want to get into arguments about other changes.

2. I don't want to make 2119 obsolete: there's value in continuing to
refer to it with that RFC number.

Barry


>> On Mar 28, 2016, at 10:09 AM, Barry Leiba <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> The wishy washy descriptive rather than proscriptive language in the abstract was because I,
>>> the IESG and the community were not of one mind to say that the use of such capitalized
>>> terms should be mandatory - quite a few people felt that the english language was at
>>> least good enough to convey  the writer’s intent without having to aggrandize specific words.
>>> Thus the abstract basically was saying: if you want to use capitalized words here is a standard
>>> way to say what they mean
>>
>> Ah.  Then perhaps the clarification needs to go a little further and
>> make this clear:
>> - We're defining specific terms that specifications can use.
>> - These terms are always capitalized when these definitions are used.
>
> these definitions are only meaningful if the words are capitalized
>
>> - You don't have to use them.  If you do, they're capitalized and
>> their meanings are as specified here.
>> - There are similar-looking English words that are not capitalized,
>> and they have their normal English meanings; this document has nothing
>> to do with them.
>>
>> ...and I'd like to add one more, because so many people think that
>> text isn't normative unless it has 2119 key words in all caps in it:
>>
>> - Normative text doesn't require the use of these key words.  They're
>> used for clarity and consistency when you want that, but lots of
>> normative text doesn't need to use them, and doesn't use them.
>>
>> Barry
>