On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Rob Siemborski wrote: > However, the wording is unfortunate.
OK, I can go along with that. Was there a reason why you did not bring up this issue when RFC 3501 was in Last Call? Will you now propose amended wording for the next revision? It is very annoying to hear complaints about the document's wording when that wording has been brought up for review multiple times over a period of many years. It is non-constructive to make absurd interpretations of the protocol in this mailing list. If the wording in the document is broken, then please propose a fix to the wording. Don't damage the protocol. > No. By requires its use I mean that a client that fails to function in > the absence of these flags is broken. Which is merely a restatement of "a > mailbox can be neither \Marked or \Unmarked". The intent has always been that neither-flag is a valid state. That's why there are two flags, even though this creates a silly state of both flags. > Yes, but my first (quick) reading of the text was "\Marked and \Unmarked > have inverse meanings, and may be absent if it is expensive to compute if > a mailbox is interesting or not" That isn't a necessarily "wrong" reading. It doesn't preclude other "right" readings. > > That "penguins" example is nonsensical and insulting. It obfuscates the > > discussion and makes matters difficult for everyone. > However, a literal reading of the specification allows this > interpretation. Yes, but we can apply enough of a razor to skip absurdity. Otherwise we'll be spending the rest of our lives coming up with absurd statements that can be created from a literal reading. It suffices to say that that part of the specification needs to be amended. It may never be possible to write the document in such a way as to preclude any possibility of absurd interpretations from a literal reading. I don't think that it is necessary to attempt to do so. We just have to avoid the absurd interpretations that an implementor is likely to make. For example, we had to change the definition of sequence-set because someone thought that they looked enough like ranges in mathematics that the semantics of mathematics applied even though nothing in the specification said so. That may be absurd, but at least one implementor didn't think so. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
