- From: pat hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 14:52:16 -0500
- To: www-qa@w3.org, lesch@w3.org
- Message-Id: <p05210600bb0e834b153e@[10.0.100.24]>
I have a style question regarding how best to render RFC2119 meanings
in HTML documents.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-qaframe-spec-20030210/ section 1.6 says:
"The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY ", and "OPTIONAL" will be
used as defined in RFC 2119 [RFC2119] . When used with the normative
RFC2119 meanings, they will be all uppercase. Occurrences of these
words in lowercase comprise normal prose usage, with no normative
implications. "
I would normally understand this to mean that these keywords should
appear in a document in visible uppercase. However, section 9.7 of
http://www.w3.org/Guide/pubrules says:
"When these key words are used in the RFC sense, make them UPPERCASE,
enclose them in the em element, and style them with CSS to make the
UPPERCASE readable.
<em title="MUST in RFC 2119 context"
class="RFC2119">MUST</em>
.RFC2119 {
text-transform: lowercase;
font-style: italic;
} "
and the recommended styling removes the uppercase from the view of
the document as seen in most browsers, so it is impossible for a
reader to see whether the word is being used normatively or normally
(with emphasis).
So, which is it? MAY what the reader sees on their screen look like
lowercase italic, or MUST it look like uppercase Roman?
Pat Hayes
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home
40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax
FL 32501 (850)291 0667 cell
phayes@ihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Thursday, 12 June 2003 15:52:19 UTC