Re: Replacing ‘may not’ and ‘shall not’ by ‘must not‘ ?
* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [111026 19:12]:
> "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:
> > * Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [111026 00:43]:
>
> >> I think it would be lovely to just use RFC 2119 language or a close
> >> adaptation thereof. We're sort of reinventing the wheel here,
>
> > There is also those previous art called "language". I do not think it
> > makes sense at all to switch from the wheel to some cogwheel when still
> > wanting to run on roads.
[ignoring ad hominem attacks given here, to avoid returning them...]
> The previous art called "English" developed for day-to-day human
> expression and is poor at formal specifications because so many words have
> multiple alternative meanings and can carry different levels of weight in
> different contexts. Particularly when one has a substantial number of
> non-native readers who aren't going to pick up on subtle nuance, this just
> doesn't work. This is something that basically every standards body has
> confronted at one time or another in the past.
If you wanted to replace policy with a formal set of requirements and
descriptions like RFCs have them, then this argument could hold.
But transforming policy into this is illusory and I doubt it would
benefit much. It's a mixture of descriptions, requirements and rationals.
Each of them living on one of many different levels (while generally rather
describing the higher levels, leaving lower level stuff to the implementation
(i.e. dpkg and dak). It's a set of rules to be used on top of the
implementation to allow us to build a coherent system.
Just take a look at the section "Binary packages" and notice what is
not described in there. (And for people suggesting to use some RFC like
description and thinking that is possible, what would you make out of
the current 3.1, 3.2, and 3.2.1 for example?)
Bernhard R. Link
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