Ed Murphy wrote: > coppro wrote: > >> 6. NEED NOT: Failing to perform the described action does not >> violate the rule in question. > > Note that this has a similar quirk to MAY. Consider: > > Rule 5001, Power=1: X MAY NOT Y. > Rule 5002, Power=2: X MAY Y. > > Rule 5003, Power=1: X SHALL Z. > Rule 5004, Power=2: X NEED NOT Z. > > In each pair, the Power=2 rule fails to take precedence, because the > formal definitions don't conflict in the way that the ordinary-language > definitions would. (Fixing this would require amending MAY and NEED > NOT by replacing "does not violate the rule in question" with "does > not violate the rules". I'm pretty sure I proposed this for MAY a > while back, but don't remember what happened.) Better to amend MMI so that it generally obeys precedence, I think, otherwise most offences will be violations of MMI.
-coppro
