On Thu, 2008-09-25, Pete Resnick wrote:
5322 (nee 2822upd) is in AUTH48. During this process, the editor
noted some confusion about some of the text: Sometimes when I say
(e.g.) "phrase", it's not clear whether I'm referring to the ABNF
terminal "phrase" or a description of it. It's somewhat easy to
distinguish, for instance, "a quoted string" from "quoted-string",
but other places it's trickier.
Quoting from RFC 5234, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications", 2.1:
Unlike original BNF, angle brackets ("<", ">") are not required.
However, angle brackets may be used around a rule name whenever their
presence facilitates in discerning the use of a rule name. This is
typically restricted to rule name references in free-form prose[...]
This seems to me to allow angle brackets to be used in only those places
where it is needed to remove ambiguity.
If I understand you correctly, you have already found a small number of
places where ambiguity exists, so I would recommend changing just those
places.
--
Bill McQuillan <McQuilWP(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>