Re: Warren Kumari's No Objection on draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-19: (with COMMENT)

Thanks everyone for your input.

After consideration I've decided to change "infelicities" to "flaws".

While I'm a touch sad to see it go, I agree that the change does
improve the document's readability.

- Steven

On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 2:42 AM Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 02:11:40PM -0500, Michael Sweet wrote:
> > Steven/Warren,
> >
> > I know the RFC 7322 doesn't say anything about using obscure words or idioms,
> > but IMHO since the majority of the world does not speak/read English as a
> > first language we should probably be writing boring, unambiguous text that
> > everyone with a basic understanding of English can read.
> >
> > Adding "character" like this won't endear you to those readers, no matter how
> > "easy" is it to type "what the f**k does infelicities mean?" into your
> > favorite search engine or AI bot...
>
> I'm among those having no idea what this means. And just like for a number
> of idioms that appear in texts I read, I don't look them up on a computer,
> that would distract my lceture. I just try to imagine what this means in
> the context where I find them, thinking that I might understand later,
> and in the end the text I've read keeps some blurry parts that I might
> not necessarily have fully understood and that I hope are not very
> important.
>
> > I guess in the end it just depends on what your goals are in publishing this
> > RFC...
>
> In my opinion, we should always keep in mind that protocol specifications
> should still be easy to understand 100 years from now. Language evolves a
> little bit in 100 years (grammar can slightly vary for example) but what
> you read remains consistent. Rarely used words can disappear, which is not
> necessarily a problem if they're not important to grasp the general idea.
> But if they're used to mean either something positive/good or something
> negative/bad, it can confuse the reader into thinking that something is
> expected vs unexecpted. Same for idioms or temporal references to
> expressions coming from movies or TV shows, they're impossible to
> understand by non-local readers and by future readers.
>
> Just my two cents,
> Willy

Received on Tuesday, 18 November 2025 18:52:48 UTC