At 11:44 AM 2/9/2002 -0500, James R. Frysinger wrote: >Jim, > >You raise an excellent point. Let me elaborate the point with the usual >caveat and disclaimer that I am not a lawyer. However, this may prove to >be a useful "short guide" to various documents and may help put things >in perspective. ....
Jim, you wrote a very thorough and educational response. I understand your comment now that the space is not required. However, I also see something interesting between the lines. You refer in several places to the legal aspects of these documents, what is legally binding, etc. It seems to me that, from a practical legal standpoint, the question of this space is really a non-issue. By this I mean that I cannot conceive of a circumstance in commerce where this space (or lack thereof) would raise any kind of legal or contractual issue. I personally work with contracts and lawyers and vendors and customers (including numerous government customers) every day. Many of these contracts reference numerous MIL, IPC, SAE and other standards. And there is absolutely no doubt that we frequently design and deliver products that violate some obscure clause somewhere in some of these documents. There is also no doubt that these reams of paper frequently include their own contradictions, which ensure such violations take place. But who cares? If the violated clause were of the nature of "space between a number and a unit of measure," no one in the real world would do more than point out if someone were in error. No one who has a deadline to meet or customer to make happy is going to put any time into such a triviality as this space. The same thing applies to whether we use a true "mu" (�) or the letter "u" is used in a document. And probably a lot of other "nit picky" rules. I do not mean to imply that we should not have such rules, only that we shouldn't ever-emphasize how critical they are in day-to-day contractual/legal situations. Jim Elwell
