[DFDL-WG] minor spec issue - Section 2: required, optional, and RFC2119 notational conventions

[Steve Hanson]

Action raised.

Regards
 
Steve Hanson
Architect, IBM DFDL
Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group
IBM Integration Bus, Hursley, UK
smh at uk.ibm.com
tel:+44-1962-815848
mob:+44-7717-378890



From:   Steve Hanson/UK/IBM
To:     Mike Beckerle <mbeckerle.dfdl at gmail.com>
Cc:     "dfdl-wg at ogf.org" <dfdl-wg at ogf.org>
Date:   26/10/2015 11:09
Subject:        Re: [DFDL-WG] minor spec issue - Section 2: required, 
optional, and RFC2119 notational conventions


Mike, 

I agree with your conclusion. 

In RFC2119 'must' and 'shall' are also synonyms, and I would like to see 
the DFDL spec use 'must' throughout and drop the use of 'shall' (it looks 
like there is only one use - in section 9.3.2.2).

Fwiw I've always been suspicious of that statement in section 2, as I 
don't believe there has ever been a review of the uses of 'must', 
'should', 'may' to ensure compliance with RFC2119. 

Regards
 
Steve Hanson
Architect, IBM DFDL
Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group
IBM Systems, Hursley, UK
smh at uk.ibm.com
tel:+44-1962-815848




From:   Mike Beckerle <mbeckerle.dfdl at gmail.com>
To:     "dfdl-wg at ogf.org" <dfdl-wg at ogf.org>
Date:   25/10/2015 21:55
Subject:        [DFDL-WG] minor spec issue - Section 2: required, 
optional, and RFC2119 notational conventions
Sent by:        "dfdl-wg" <dfdl-wg-bounces at ogf.org>




In Section 2 on notational conventions we say "The key words must, must 
not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may,
may not and optional in this document are to be interpreted as described 
in [RFC2119]."

Which is fine except for the words "required" and "optional" which we use 
in several different senses. Section 21 on optional features of the DFDL 
standard uses "optional" vs. "required" in this sense of RFC2119.

But we also use "Optional Occurrence",  "Optional Element" very 
specifically and define them in our glossary. (Along with Required 
Occurrence and Required Element.)

So the above sentence on notational conventions we should just drop the 
words "optional" and "required".

I looked for synonyms for required/optional. mandatory/nonmandatory and 
compulsory/noncompulsory are ones that we might consider using in the 
future. We do use mandatory now as in mandatory alignment of character set 
code units. 

Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | 
www.tresys.com
Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are 
subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy
--
  dfdl-wg mailing list
  dfdl-wg at ogf.org
  https://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dfdl-wg


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/dfdl-wg/attachments/20151106/07745f35/attachment.html>