Re: SHOULD and RECOMMENDED

[Dave Cridland <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

I DO NOT agree that 2119 is the only source of consequence here.

 

If a document explicitly states that the term "RECOMMENDED" is to be interpreted as in RFC 2119, then that really is the only interpretation, and RFC 2119 does then become the only source of consequence. This is beyond personal opinions.

 

Perhaps if I showed Dave Cridland an article on netiquete he could try to be less patronizing. Unlike some here I do not regard the RFC series as having divine inspiration.

 

 

I'm not claiming it's the traditional meaning of the term, just that RFCs do tend to be explicit in what they mean by it..

 

I've no idea how I'm being patronizing, but I'm certainly not claiming any kind of divine inspiration for the RFCs. I'm merely suggesting that if a document says "This word means X", we should accept that and move on.

 

 

RECOMMENDED is a very useful term to have. Particularly when writing specs for middleware.

 

That's an interesting debate to have, but it has no bearing on what the term means in the context of documents citing RFC 2119.

 

For what it's worth, I entirely agree that a term with force somewhere between MAY and SHOULD would be very useful in some cases, but in general we can work around this, such as saying "implementations are encouraged to use channel binding", or some such.

 

 

 

The IETF document describing use of the term is WRONG it needs to be corrected. Any corrections would only apply to new specs that reference the new RFC.

 

 

It's not wrong, it clearly gives a meaning to the term. That meaning is not in line with the implications it might have if used in spoken English, certainly, but it's clearly stated, and used in that sense as far as I can tell.

 

Dave.

 

Sent with inky