--On Wednesday, August 10, 2016 14:24 -0700 Dave Crocker
<dcrocker@xxxxxxxx> 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