I've written text such as "For clients, support for X is REQUIRED."
Sent from my iPad
On Aug 13, 2016, at 12:13 AM, Pete Resnick
<presnick(_at_)qti(_dot_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 11 Aug 2016, at 6:44, Stewart Bryant wrote:
Optional is useful in a requirements RFC.
Feature x is REQUIRED
Feature y is OPTIONAL
One last (and perhaps fruitless) attempt to keep this section and deprecate
the adjectives:
Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL results in exactly the problem of using passive
voice anywhere: REQUIRED by whom? OPTIONAL for whom? If you say, "A MUST do X
and B MAY do Y", it is perfectly clear which actor is responsible (and in
network protocols there are inevitably at least 2). If you say "X is REQUIRED
and Y is OPTIONAL", you'll end up needing more text to explain the actors and
their roles.
Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL is lazy. It makes specs less clear. They ought to
be dropped.
pr
--
Pete Resnick http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478