On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 7:59 AM Paul Kyzivat <pkyzivat= 40alum.mit....@dmarc.ietf.org> wrote:
> On 5/16/25 8:45 AM, Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote: > > > An additional reason why I think that English sentences are better than > ABNF or any other formalism as the normative part of a standard track RFC: > most people understand what an English sentence means, > > Most people *in the world* don't understand ABNF. > > If we restrict the population to those people who can understand and > wish to implement an RFC, then most probably understand both. > To pile on here a little, I don't think our objective should be to have our RFCs understandable by the general public, but rather by the intended audience, which is implementors, protocol designers, reviewers, etc. I think that audience is best served by having the specifications be precise, even if that comes at some readability cost to people with less context. In my experience the tension between precision and accessibility by non-specialists is quite common and not confined to technology. This isn't a call for unnecessary formalism, but rather agreement with Carsten and Paul that formalism is a useful part of precise specification, even while it is not capable of capturing everything we mean to say. -Ekr
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