- From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:19:48 -0500
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: "www-html@w3.org" <www-html@w3.org>
At 7:58 AM +0000 12/9/02, Ian Hickson wrote:
>If you read RFC2119, you'll find that SHOULD NOT is equivalent to MUST
>NOT for most cases.
OK, I just read that (a little belatedly) and I don't see that
they're at all the same. Specifically, "SHOULD NOT" is defined as
This phrase, or the phrase "NOT RECOMMENDED" mean that
there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances when the
particular behavior is acceptable or even useful, but the full
implications should be understood and the case carefully weighed
before implementing any behavior described with this label.
In other words, it's OK to do this if you have a good reason and you
know what you're doing. MUST NOT is much stronger:
2. MUST NOT This phrase, or the phrase "SHALL NOT", mean that the
definition is an absolute prohibition of the specification.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/ |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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Received on Monday, 16 December 2002 09:27:59 UTC