Re: NEW ISSUE: Define "ought to"

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 06:08:41PM -0400, cowwoc wrote:
> On 30/07/2013 5:45 PM, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> >I'd say that "ought to" here in the HTTP spect is generally a good friend's
> >advice from some other implementors that got trapped and know how to avoid
> >this. There's nothing normative in what follows "ought to" so those who
> >won't follow it will not cause harm and might only suffer themselves.
> >SHOULD is a MUST with an exception if you know you can safely ignore it.
> 
>     That is an excellent explanation. Please consider adding it to 
> section 1.1.

It is not needed in my opinion. All the spec is written in english (and
hopefully understandable english for non-native speakers). There are
provisions for a few keywords that are part of the norm which are defined
as possibly having a specific meaning. All the rest is purely english text,
so I don't see why we should clarify this point. Otherwise we'll have to
precise every word in the spec. It would not make sense either to say that
if we write "a server might receive a request with a body", the "might"
here would have to be clarified as being different from the normative one.
It's the same with "ought to" in my opinion, otherwise you're making a new
normative word of it, which will prevent us from naturally using it where
only the english sense is desired.

Hoping this helps,
Willy

Received on Tuesday, 30 July 2013 22:13:43 UTC