"Should" sanity check

Hello,

I just went though all the documents and have checked the usage of "should" in them. I have corrected the usage in several places;
here are the diffs:

Semantics:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Semantics&diff=8177&oldid=7488

RDF mapping:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Mapping_to_RDF_Graphs&diff=8172&oldid=8170

XML syntax:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=XML_Serialization&diff=8176&oldid=794

Profiles:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Profiles&diff=8173&oldid=7913

Structural specification:
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Syntax&diff=8168&oldid=8155


After this clean-up, only the structural specification contains occurrences of "should" in the text (profiles contain "should" in
reviewers' comments, but not in the text). All usages of "should" in the structural spec are now in the sense "should do unless
there is some really good reason not to".


For the moment, I left all the letters in lower case. I did this because of two reasons:

- I really didn't understand what the outcome of the discussion at the teleconf was.
- Writing "SHOULD" instead of "should" in places such as examples seemed to me really ugly.

I tried to reformulate the examples in a way that doesn't use should; however, the text then becomes really weird.

If the general consensus is that we should use "SHOULD" in the normative part of the document, then I propose to use lowercase
"should" in places that are not normative, such as examples. In all cases, I will use "should" and "SHOULD" in the same sense; it is
just that using the stressed "SHOULD" in nonnormative parts of the document such as examples seems quite strange to me.

Regards,

	Boris

Received on Wednesday, 28 May 2008 19:17:19 UTC