On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 22:07 +0200, Richard Hartmann wrote: > The second question on my mind is if using MUST for hextet is > appropriate. Using SHOULD is fine as well though I personally think > MUST is better to avoid any and all potential confusion.
"hextet" - oh dear. Were there really no better suggestions than quibble and hextet? Sorry for missing the earlier discussions, an I'll pull my head in if it's really gone that far down the track, but "hextet" is wrong on o many levels. It implies that it consists of six things - like a quintet (5), septet(7) or triplet(3). The idea that a hextet is four hex digits is very counter-intuitive. What about "quad"? IPv4 has "dotted quad", but I've never heard that notation referred to as "quad" without the "dotted". I doubt there would be confusion regardless, and certainly not in context. "Quad" accurately conveys the sense of "four", there are four hex digits in each section of an uncompressed IPv6 address etc - seems like a good word. However, "field" is even better. It's straightforward and gets around the fact that the chunk between two colons in an IPv6 address is often *not* actually four hex digits. It may represent any number of hex digits from zero to 32! For such a thing, "hextet"and "quad" are both very wrong. "Field" would remain correct, however. An invented word, unless it has the same quirky, geeky humor of "byte" and "nibble", is most unlikely to be generally adopted. Definitely "SHOULD", not "MUST". People will say what they say. > this issue might not seem to be important at first, but many/most > people tend to reconsider after some thinking, I confess I thought at first you might be joking.... Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) +61-2-64957160 (h) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer/ +61-428-957160 (mob) GPG fingerprint: DA41 51B1 1481 16E1 F7E2 B2E9 3007 14ED 5736 F687 Old fingerprint: B386 7819 B227 2961 8301 C5A9 2EBC 754B CD97 0156
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