Re: SHOULD vs MUST case sensitivity

[Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>]

> Computer science long ago made the mistake of imposing semantic 
> difference on
> case differences, which is distinct from other uses of case.  Absent 
> explicit
> specification of case sensitivity for the keywords, the rules of 
> English writing
> apply, I would think.
For better or worse, in IETF we have often intentionally made a 
distinction between SHOULD and should, MUST and must, and so forth.  I 
don't think we should try to retroactively change the interpretation of 
existing RFCs that cite RFC 2119.

However, it strikes me that such distinctions might be lost when 
translating RFCs into languages that lack the notion of case, or for 
which upper cased words would not serve to convey a sense of emphasis or 
distinction.   So it might be the case that a future update to RFC 2119 
would include a section about translation of these keywords into other 
languages.

Keith

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