Subject: Re: relay checking

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 23:14:37 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Henry Spencer <[email-masked]> writes:

>On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>    3.   It SHOULD reject any article that does not have the correct
>>         mandatory headers (section a-5) present.

>Why "correct"?  That seems redundant, and it is bound to make people
>wonder whether it has some special significance.  I'd take that word out.

Because that word has been there all along. But I take your point.

   3.   It SHOULD reject any article that does not include all the
        mandatory headers (section a-5).

And likewise for serving agents.

There was also a similar use of "correct" in relation to injecting agents
and proto-articles, where I have changed it to "proper".

>Otherwise, this seems okay.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 09:11:17 -0700 (PDT)

Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Most people believe that SHOULD (or the seldom-used RECOMMENDED) carries a
>lot of weight -- that it is not just a suggestion or an encouragement, but
>an emphatic recommendation that you disregard at your peril, although
>unusual circumstances may occasionally justify violating it. 

>There are a few people who persist in claiming that it doesn't really mean
>that.  My concern is to communicate, and therefore I use SHOULD with its
>consensus meaning. 

Unfortunately, every standard that uses SHOULD proclaims somewhere within 
that they use SHOULD as it is defined in RFC2119. There is no mention of 
"peril" or "emphatic" in that standard. Not even the implication.

Wouldn't it be nice if the "consensus" meaning actually matched the
consensus meaning that was achieved when RFC2119 was adopted? I mean, if 
the authors of RFC2119 MEANT the strength of force that Henry's 
"consensus" says, they could have said so themselves. Since they did not,
it seems clear to me that they didn't intend any such force.