On 12/11/08 11:03 PM, Victor Duchovni at victor.ducho...@morganstanley.com wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:53:18PM -0600, Larry Stone wrote: > >>> This is not a bug, but it is admittedly an unecessary deviation from >>> SHOULD normative language in the RFC when the client is in flagrant >>> violation by sending garbage. >> >> At the risk of moving away from Postfix technical issues, RFC 2821 is poorly >> written. SHOULD, despite much misuse in commonly used English, is the past >> tense of SHALL. Something that SHALL be done is mandatory yet in common but >> incorrect use, SHOULD is often used to mean present tense MAY (as in you can >> do so but it is not mandatory). As a formal document, the RFC ought to say >> either SHALL (mandatory) or MAY (optional) with SHOULD, being in the past >> tense, completely incorrect in the context of that paragraph. Unfortunately, >> given the incorrect use of SHOULD, it is unclear to me what the RFC really >> means. > > You *should* next read: > > http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 Thanks. So they misuse English in RFCs so then have to put out a separate RFC to specify what they really mean where they have used the wrong word. :-( Of course, the whole idea that a standards document is called a "Request for Comments" is pretty ridiculous too. -- Larry Stone lston...@stonejongleux.com http://www.stonejongleux.com/
