30.08.2011 3:08, Mark Nottingham wrote:
Thanks for starting this, Peter. A few comments / topics for discussion:
1) I agree that the "SHOULD... UNLESS" pattern ought be documented.
I think 2119bis should discuss use of the keywords in conditional
clauses, how to interpret something like "<a> MUST be set to <b> if <c>
is <d>", or "<a> SHOULD be <b> if <c> and SHOULD be <d> if <e>" etc.
Defining the "<keyword> ... IF"/"<keyword> ... UNLESS" constructions for
all of them?
2) I strongly believe that authors should be encouraged to enumerate the
potential subjects of conformance terms, and to use them in every instance.
For example, a requirement like this:
"""The Foo header MUST contain the "bar" directive"""
is ambiguous; it doesn't specify who has to do what. Rather,
"""Senders MUST include the "bar" directive when producing the Foo header; recipients that receive a Foo
header without a "bar" directive MUST ..."""
is unambiguous (assuming that the spec defines the terms "sender" and
"recipient").
+1.
3) It may be worth further cautioning against over-use of MAY; this is the
most-abused term, IME. Perhaps encouraging people to make requirements testable
on the wire would help.
My personal observation is that MAY is often used in sense of "can",
i.e. to designate possibility rather than optionality. So 2119bis
should be clear that MAY is used for describing discretionary
actions/behavior, and those authors who wish to denote "possible action"
should use "can", which shouldn't be included in the repertoire as being
irrelevant to conformance.
4) WRT to the status of the document -- if people really feel that we don't
need to revise 2119, I'd define this as a superset of 2119 and NOT obsolete it;
i.e., have documents opt into it. However, I'd hope that we can get consensus
that it's time to build on what 2119 offers.
See my previous message.
Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Cheers,
On 30/08/2011, at 7:36 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
After staring at http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?eid=499 for
long enough, I finally decided to submit an I-D that is intended to
obsolete RFC 2119. I hope that I've been able to update and clarify the
text in a way that is respectful of the original. Feedback is welcome.
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-saintandre-2119bis-01.txt
Peter
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Peter Saint-Andre
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