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Re: I'm struggling with 2219 language again

Richard Barnes <rbarnes@bbn.com> Fri, 04 January 2013 19:04 UTC

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Subject: Re: I'm struggling with 2219 language again
From: Richard Barnes <rbarnes@bbn.com>
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Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:04:51 -0500
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To: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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Anecdotal data point number N+1...

As an occasional implementor of IETF specs, I have to say it's much easier to check my conformance if I can just grep for "MUST" and "SHOULD".  It's also easy for developers to get in the bad habit of ONLY doing those things that are clearly marked in that way.  So ISTM that if you're not tagging things you want done with RFC 2119 language, then you're risking people not implementing them.



On Jan 4, 2013, at 1:15 PM, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:

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> Wonderful perennial topic. :)
> 
> As I always say when this comes up, when writing drafts I've settled
> on using the 2119 keywords only in their uppercase form, and otherwise
> using "need to", "ought to", "might" (etc.) to avoid all possible
> confusion. Sure, it's a bit stilted, but we're not writing gorgeous
> prose here, we're writing technical specifications that need to be
> completely clear.
> 
> Peter
> 
> - --
> Peter Saint-Andre
> https://stpeter.im/
> 
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