On Sat, Oct 21, 2023 at 05:08:48AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > On Fri, 20 Oct 2023, David Gibson wrote: > > > On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 07:03:56AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > > > Reading DTSpec v0.4, near the beginning: > > > > > > "The word should is used to indicate that among several possibilities > > > one is recommended as particularly suitable, without mentioning or > > > excluding others; or that a certain course of action is preferred but > > > not necessarily required; or that (in the negative form) a certain > > > course of action is deprecated but not prohibited (should equals is > > > recommended that)." > > > > > > It seems contradictory to suggest that "should" implies > > > "recommended" but, in the negative sense, it can also support > > > > I believe that by "in the negative form", it means when something says > > "should not".. > > > > > "deprecated", which typically suggests something that is *not* > > > recommended but is nonetheless acceptable. > > > > ..in which case being similar to "deprecated" makes sense. > > > > I will agree that saying "in the negative form", parenthesized, > > amongst a cluster of interacting clauses is probably not a great way > > of expressing this, and it might be clearer to explicitly give a > > meaning to "should not". > > Yes, I see that I misread it somewhat and it's not as bad as I > thought originally, but it definitely would be clearer if the concept > of "should not" was combined with the idea of, say: > > "Should not" means that, even if a particular possibility is > discouraged or deprecated, it is still acceptable as a viable choice. > > Or something like that. "in the negative form" is way too wordy for > saying simply, "should not". Yeah. I guess it covers "shouldn't" as well, and maybe there are other ways of negating the sense of "should" that I'm not thinking of at the moment. Not convinced that's a good trade off, though. -- David Gibson | I'll have my music baroque, and my code david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au | minimalist, thank you. NOT _the_ _other_ | _way_ _around_! http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson
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