Grammatically, RECOMMENDED is sometimes useful, as using SHOULD instead can produce less clear sentences. In principal the same applies to OPTIONAL, but I've never had cause to use it. I wouldn't miss SHALL. Except that SHALL is often the word used outside the IETF rather than must, and there may be many RFCs using it, so do need to keep the explanation, even if deprecated to use it in new documents. -- Christopher Dearlove Senior Principal Engineer BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Laboratories __________________________________________________________________________ T: +44 (0)1245 242194 | E: chris.dearlove@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, Chelmsford Technology Park, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 8HN. www.baesystems.com/ai BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Limited Registered in England & Wales No: 01337451 Registered Office: Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7YP -----Original Message----- From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Barry Leiba Sent: 09 August 2016 21:09 To: IETF discussion list Subject: Re: New Version Notification for draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt ----------------------! WARNING ! ---------------------- This message originates from outside our organisation, either from an external partner or from the internet. Consider carefully whether you should click on any links, open any attachments or reply. Follow the 'Report Suspicious Emails' link on IT matters for instructions on reporting suspicious email messages. -------------------------------------------------------- This draft should be self-explanatory -- and please be sure to look at Section 1.1 for some explanations that may short-cut some of the discussion. The bottom line is to update BCP 14 (RFC 2119) to (1) make it clear that the key words MUST(/NOT), SHOULD(/NOT), and MAY are only key words when they're in ALL CAPS, and (2) deprecate the use of the variants (SHALL, RECOMMENDED, OPTIONAL) so as to avoid reserving an unnecessarily number of key words. Discussion here, please, before Ben, who has kindly agreed to AD-sponsor this, sends it out for last call. And we do expect there to be some significant discussion on this one. Barry On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 2:55 PM, <internet-drafts@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > A new version of I-D, draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt has been > successfully submitted by Barry Leiba and posted to the IETF > repository. > > Name: draft-leiba-rfc2119-update > Revision: 00 > Title: Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words > Document date: 2016-08-09 > Group: Individual Submission > Pages: 4 > URL: https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00.txt > Status: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update/ > Htmlized: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-leiba-rfc2119-update-00 > > > Abstract: > RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol > specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by > clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the > defined special meanings, and by deprecating some versions of the key > words. > ******************************************************************** This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender. You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or distribute its contents to any other person. ********************************************************************