Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-sieve-3028bis-04.txt

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> Michael Haardt wrote:
> > Section 1.1:
> >
> >    Each section on a command (test, action, or control) has a line
> >    labeled "Syntax:".  This line describes the syntax of the command,
> >    including its name and its arguments.
> >
> > If this line described syntax, its contents would be listed in the
> > grammar.  There is a number of RFCs that list specific rules throughout
> > the document, explaining them, and all of them are listed together in
> > the full grammar.  That's _not_ the case for Sieve.

> You're right.  The word "Syntax" should be replaced by "Usage" or
> something.  I don't think "Semantics" is right, either.

"Usage:" would be my choice - it matches what's commonly used in many other
sorts of documents for this stuff. I'm going to switch the vacation and
date/index drafts to use "Usage:" for now.

As to the idea of actually using formal grammar for this sort of thing, been
there, done that, bad idea. Having been on the receiving end of questions for
RFC 1521 issues, I can tell you that using subgrammars (or whatever the correct
term for this is) creates about 10X more confusion than clarity.

The simple fact of the matter is that people just aren't that good at
extracting usage information from ABNF. THis isn't to say we should not have a
precise definition of the overall syntax in ABNF - implementors at the very
least need it - but using ABNF to provide usage information' goes too far. The
form we use now is simple, easy to read, and gets the job done.

				Ned