John, I don't share your confusion. I do feel that to be able to construct reasonably pleasant sentences, we need both the verb SHOULD and the adjectival participle RECOMMENDED, and their negatives, in various circumstances. I could propose an alternative erratum, adding MANDATORY, but I won't; it's NOT MANDATORY to increase confusion. Regards Brian On 2011-09-13 04:41, John C Klensin wrote: > > --On Monday, September 12, 2011 09:34 -0600 Peter Saint-Andre > <stpeter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On 8/29/11 3:36 PM, 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 >> Based on the feedback received, I do not plan to pursue >> further work on that Internet-Draft. However, given that the >> IETF Secretariat and the RFC Editor team already accept >> documents that include "NOT RECOMMENDED" in the RFC 2119 >> boilerplate, does anyone see harm in verifying the >> aforementioned erratum? > > Sigh. > > Sorry to make this more complicated but, IMO, the error in 2119 > and, to some extent, recent practice, is in permitting > "RECOMMENDED" as a synonym for "SHOULD", not in failing to > permit its opposite. If one goes back to 2026, there is a > fairly clear separation between Technical Specifications" and > interoperability requirements (terminology for which appears in > 2119) and the "Requirement levels" and conformance requirements > of Applicability Statements. Those levels, as specified in > Section 3.3 of RFC 2026, are "Required", "Recommended", > "Elective", "Limited Use", and "Not Recommended". > > According to 2026, those requirement levels in AS documents > apply to entire TSs but I think we have sometimes relaxed that a > bit into statements about features within a TS. If AS > requirement level statements apply only to full TS > specifications, the use for "RECOMMENDED" as a statement about > interoperability requirements, synonymous with "SHOULD" is > merely somewhat confusing. If we are going to sometimes have > ASs that make statements at the feature level, then it is > disastrously so because the same term has an interoperability > meaning in one context, a conformance meaning in another, and > there may be no reliable way to deduce the difference. > > To provide an additional focus for this, I've just filed > proposed erratum 2969 > (http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=2119&eid=2969) > that reflects the comments above. You now have a choice about > which one to approve :-) > > regards, > john > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf