--On Wednesday, August 10, 2016 14:24 -0700 Dave Crocker
<dcrocker(_at_)bbiw(_dot_)net> wrote:
On 8/10/2016 2:09 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
I'd even favor some text that
discourages the use of the lower-case forms except when the
meaning (normative status) is clear from context or the
alternatives would be really awkward.
That sounds appealing. Except that it has no objective or
even reliable basis for its application.
First, I tried to make it clear that it was advice to authors,
not any sort of normative requirement, so I'm not even sure what
a presumed requirement for an "objective or reliable basis..."
would mean in that context.
Second, and equally important, when last I checked, we still had
an RFC Editor Function at the end of the pipe and that process
is charged with editorial clarity and quality of documents. If
they have a guideline like the one I suggested and see
lower-case forms used where they might be confusing, I'd
expected them to either fix them or at least negotiate with the
author(s) and relevant stream. Absent any guidelines, I think
the evidence is that their response is "stream problem, we don't
need to worry about it" and the confusion goes into the final
document.
best,
john