Re: Murky ratings (fwd)

Once upon a time Jason White shaped the electrons to say...
>which I suspect is likely to create confusion. A useful question to ask
>is what purpose is served by attaching different levels of importance to
>each of the guidelines. The answer seems to be that it establishes an
>order of priorities: the "required" guidelines would need to be
>implemented with greater urgency and thoroughness, when creating or, more
>significantly, updating an HTML document, whereas the "recommended" items
>can, so the term implies, be postponed. This is reasonable, so long as a

I recently moved cross-country, changed jobs, got a new house, etc - so
please forgive me if this came up already.  I'm trying to jump back into
the thick of things as life is settled back out again.

What is wrong with the RFC style terms?  They've been in use for years and
seem very clear to me:
MUST
SHOULD
MAY
SHOULD NOT
MUST NOT

MUST - you have to do it.
SHOULD - it is strongly recommend that these be done.
MAY - these items may or may not be done, not considered very important.
SHOULD NOT - it is strongly recommended that these NOT be done.
MUST NOT - you CANNOT do these.

If you meet all MUST and MUST NOTs you are 'conditionally compliant'.
If you meet all MUST, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, and MUST NOTs you are 'fully
compliant'.

>appropriate term, as Daniel suggests. Perhaps "paramount" and
>"recommended" would be best, or even "paramount", "strongly recommended"

Frankly to me, paramount is wishy-washy.  No where need the impact as
'required'. or 'must'.  As A developer it wouldn't mean much to me.

-MZ
-- 
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Received on Sunday, 17 May 1998 18:48:23 UTC