I think Nick's email was a review of the document in general, rather than commentary on my review in particular. But since it was addressed to me, I do have one comment in response:
On Dec 18, 2012, at 4:12 PM, Nick Hilliard <n...@inex.ie> wrote: > On 18/12/2012 20:14, Ben Campbell wrote: >> ** Nits/editorial comments: >> >> -- The 2119 paragraph was removed, but there's still an orphaned 2119 entry >> in the informational reference section. > > I'm not sure that this was a good idea. There are a lot of "has to"s in > this text, and it's not clear to me whether they are phrased like that as a > way of getting around 2119, or what's going on. Whatever the reason, "has > to" sounds very informal and probably not suitable for a document like > this. Could we have some clarification as to why "has to" doesn't mean > "MUST" (or even "SHOULD"). I don't think so. This draft does not establish a standard, or define a protocol. While I don't speak for the authors, I don't think it's intended to make normative statements about anything. The language is descriptive, not prescriptive. (I agree "has to" is an awkward substitute for the non-normative "must". I agree that "must" should generally be avoided when there can be confusion about the normativeness of a statement. I'm not sure that's the case here, since the whole doc is non-normative. And I think we could find better language even when the confusion is possible.)