Answer to Ian Hickson: Case of RFC2119 terms

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your comments on the Last Call version of the QA Framework:
Specification Guidelines[0] - 22 November 2004

After two weeks from now (on May 18, 2005), the lack of answer will  
be considered as if you had accepted the comment.

Original comment (issue 1044 [1])
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2005Jan/0009.html

Thank you for your comment, which the QA Working Group has accepted.   
We have reworded the affected section as you recommended and it now  
reads [2]

Requirement 07: Use a consistent style for conformance requirements  
and explain how to distinguish them.
“What does it mean? Specifications use different styles to convey  
conformance requirements: RFC 2119 [RFC2119] keywords, imperative  
voice, descriptive assertions, etc. Tell the readers what styles are  
used, especially when the specification uses different styles for  
different parts of the specification.
Why care? It is important for readers to be able to differentiate  
requirements in the specification from non-requirements in order to  
either implement or review them.
Techniques
Using RFC 2119 [RFC2119] Keywords (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, ...) makes it  
easy to spot conformance requirements. According to the RFC itself,  
they should be used only to establish interoperation [WIKI-RFC- 
KEYWORDS]. They are usually written with distinctive formatting, such  
as upper case or bold. It is a good idea to create a specific markup  
for them too. It will be easier to extract conformance requirements  
and better for accessibility (See The Manual of Style: RFC 2119 Key  
Words [MANUAL-STYLE]).”



[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20041122/
[1] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=1044
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-qaframe-spec-20050428/#consistent- 
style-principle

-- 
Karl Dubost
QA Working Group Chair
http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/

Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2005 15:42:24 UTC