[Python-Dev] RE: PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Guido van Rossum writes:
 > You've been staring at standards too much, haven't you?  The
 > difference between MUST and SHOULD isn't as clear-cut as most
 > standards people use them.

Most standards define MUST and SHOULD very specifically, and then use
them according to those definitions.  There's an IETF RFC specifically
for use in writing RFCs, allowing those terms to be defined by
reference.  A number of W3C specs seems to be using this
definition-by-reference as well, with the same RFC providing the
actual definitions.

I think we'd do well to accept a specific definition of these terms
and use them consistently, simply to make our documentation (including
docstrings) easier to understand.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation