- 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/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ | | Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
Received on Monday, 16 December 2002 09:27:59 UTC