On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
At 8:15 AM -0500 2/15/02, Scott Brim wrote:
In normative text, I don't see how "must" could occur anywhere except
where it was supposed to mean "MUST".
It occurs when describing how something happened, not what needs to
happen. Example from a current Internet Draft that is having the
capitalization fixed:
...not less than 3, but 4 is less than 5, so 4 must be the last digit.
->
...not less than 3, but 4 is less than 5, so 4 has to be the last digit.
There were a few places where the "must" turned into a "MUST" as a
way of specifying how an implementation of the protocol had to work.
Yes. The subject of the capitalized verb MUST (SHOULD, MAY, etc) is
always, at least implicitly, "an implementation of this specification".
Sentences about other things in specs often use {must|should|may|etc} in
the ordinary sense.
- RL "Bob" (yes, I was an English major ...)