[whatwg] "must only" ambiguity

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Fri May 9 01:06:35 PDT 2008


On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Philip Taylor wrote:
>
> More generally, all uses of "must only" and "may only" etc seem 
> dangerous. The spec says "The key words [...] in the normative parts of 
> this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119", but 
> instead they have to be interpreted as described by the standard English 
> grammar rules when they're used in complex phrases like "must only", 
> which makes the spec harder to read when you're trying to read the 
> normative requirements, and can cause misunderstanding. (Does that make 
> things particularly harder for non-native-English-speaking people?)

Fixed.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'



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