On Fri, 28 Feb 1992 09:28:58 -0500 (EST) you said:
Maybe I've been too close to the stuff for too long, but I just don't
see this as a significant ambiguity. In other words, I really can't
imagine anybody being confused enough by this to cause a problem.
Maybe we have all been to close... But from time to time I try to take the
thing on paper, sit down and read from page one. When doing such an exercise,
the question in am asking myself is 'Is this the best way those things can
be expressed to make everything clear ?', and not 'Is this just not confusing
enough that one still has a chance to understand ?' 8-). My idea of standard
writing is that no efforts can be spared at making the whole stuff as clear
as possible (for example, by having some ressemblance between the words used
in the BNF and the ones used in the text, or by avoiding the use of the same
expression for designating different things).
Example of a place where it gets confusing :
The Content-Transfer-Encoding field is used to indicate the
type of transformation that has been used in order to
represent the message body part in an acceptable manner for
transport.
'body part' is used here to mean 'body'. Just say 'the message body'...
But, on this question, there is more. I pretend that the expression 'the body
or body part' is PLAIN WRONG !
a body : is a body, and can be encoded
a body part : is a thing that includes headers and a body, and that cannot
be wholly encoded.
It is thus wrong to place them at the same level.
Example of a place where it is plain misleading :
All encodings that are desired for
bodies of type multipart or message must be done at the
innermost level, by encoding the actual body part that needs
to be encoded.
..which, for someone who has not followed this for more than a year, clearly
means that the 'body part' (headers and body) can be encoded !!!!
At many places, 'body part' must be replaced by 'body of a body part'.
I know I am annoying almost anyone with this, but don't you think that bad
implementations, even when done by honest, but misleaded people, are much
more annoying for much more people !
I would be willing to take the text, make all the needed adjustment (for this
question alone), and submit the result to the editor, letting him accept or
reject the work. That's the least I can do... /AF