On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Laird Breyer wrote:
Either way, I believe that Bruce's point about decades of consistent
prior use in RFCs trumps all personal preferences.
In natural language, of course, "decades of consistent prior use" stands
for nothing. New meanings wipe away old ones almost overnight. The word
"gay" is a good example. But that's irrelevant. RFCs are not, in that
sense, "natural language". More like legal documents, I guess.
Anyway, when I raised this topic, I wasn't trying to push a personal
preference. I'm quite happy to use the formal RFC terminology. However,
many people don't, and I'm not sure that "header field" is widely
understood by folk who are not versed in the content of the RFCs.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10(_at_)cus(_dot_)cam(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44
1223 334714.