Re: terminology
Keith Moore <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.ietf.rfc822 |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
I think we should just stick with "header" consisting of one or more "header fields" where each "field" can span one or more "lines". There's been some effort to maintain that consistency of terminology in the past (to the extent that drafts often got feedback of the form "you're not using the words in the standard way", and were often changed to reflect the above terminology). And yes, a few RFCs have fallen through the cracks and failed to adhere to the standard terminology. But we'd have the same problem if we moved to different terminology. I really can't see the justification for doing so as long as the existing terminology suffices to describe these protocol elements. Choosing new terms won't do anything to prevent misuse of those new terms. And choosing new meanings for old terms will only create more confusion. And we should also just accept that "header fields" are going to be abbreviated to "headers" once in awhile, and we're going to have to sort out the differences by context. (At least in English and in several other languages, such disambiguation is quite normal and we don't even think about it as long as we can get the right meaning most of the time.) Keith