Re: [office-formula] Proposal: Bolding NOT required for "shall"/"shall not"

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>
wrote on 06/11/2008 11:37:23 AM:

> Section 1.2 says that "shall", "shall not", etc.
are only 
> interpreted per ISO/IEC
> if they appear in bold letters.
> 
> That's just ASKING for trouble:
> * If someone cuts and pastes and loses the bolding,
>   they should still be able to correctly interpret the text.
> * If we make a mistake and omit a bolding, did we REALLY
>    mean for it "not to count"?  Unlikely.
 In fact, the first "shall"
>    after that is NOT in bold (oops).
> * It may impair accessibility of the document; blind users
>   may not notice the bolding.
> I have no trouble bolding the text, but that should be a visual aid,
> and NOT required.
> 
> We should also note "need not" (it's the reverse of "may").
> 

All true.  In fact Patrick would like us to move
away from this bolding convention in ODF 1.2 and to adopt the conventions
of ISO Directives, Part 2, Annex H.

So all uses of "shall" will be normative.
 

You can see the full list of vocabulary for expressing
requirements, recommendations, permissions, possibilities, etc., in Annex
H here:  http://www.iec.ch/tiss/iec/Directives-Part2-Ed5.pdf

The task for OpenFormula would be to look at all currently
non-bolded uses of these terms and change them to something else if they
are not intended to be formal provisions.

-Rob