Re: [urn] A 'newbie' question on the terminology used in RFC:s

Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> Tue, 24 January 2012 10:52 UTC

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Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:52:03 +0100
From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
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To: Bengt Neiss <bengt.neiss@kb.se>
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Subject: Re: [urn] A 'newbie' question on the terminology used in RFC:s
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On 2012-01-24 11:43, Bengt Neiss wrote:
> Since I am new to IETF standardization and after reading
> draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc3188bis-nbn-urn-02.txt there is a question I would
> like to ask....
>
> In the text 'SHOULD' and 'should' are used as well as 'MAY' and 'may'.
> Is this intentional and are there a difference in understanding
> lower-case versus upper-case words (ie. upper-case is interpreted as
> stated in RFC 2119 and lower-case is a less strict use of the word) or
> should the use of lower-case words (in this case) be considered a 'typo'
> that should be corrected to upper-case (and as such be interpreted
> according to RFC 2119)?

The latter.

It's best to avoid these lowercase variants.

If you don't want to invoke RFC 2119, use "might", "can", "ought to", 
"advised"...