I think Nick's email was a review of the document in general, rather than
commentary on my review in particular. But since it was addressed to me, I do
have one comment in response:
On Dec 18, 2012, at 4:12 PM, Nick Hilliard <nick(_at_)inex(_dot_)ie> wrote:
On 18/12/2012 20:14, Ben Campbell wrote:
** Nits/editorial comments:
-- The 2119 paragraph was removed, but there's still an orphaned 2119 entry
in the informational reference section.
I'm not sure that this was a good idea. There are a lot of "has to"s in
this text, and it's not clear to me whether they are phrased like that as a
way of getting around 2119, or what's going on. Whatever the reason, "has
to" sounds very informal and probably not suitable for a document like
this. Could we have some clarification as to why "has to" doesn't mean
"MUST" (or even "SHOULD").
I don't think so. This draft does not establish a standard, or define a
protocol. While I don't speak for the authors, I don't think it's intended to
make normative statements about anything. The language is descriptive, not
prescriptive.
(I agree "has to" is an awkward substitute for the non-normative "must". I
agree that "must" should generally be avoided when there can be confusion about
the normativeness of a statement. I'm not sure that's the case here, since the
whole doc is non-normative. And I think we could find better language even when
the confusion is possible.)