Michael,
1. I am unsure of the intent of your reference to RFC2119, and indeed find no use of the word “conditional” in that standard. To the contrary, item 1 states :
“MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL", mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification. ”
From: Michael Sweet
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2015 5:21 PM
To: William A Wagner
Cc: ipp
Bill,
Comments inline...
_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair
On Jul 13, 2015, at 12:47 PM, wamwagner at comcast.net wrote:
...
I am unhappy with "... conformance requirement that applies to a particular capability or feature." as a general statement because:
a. Most conformance requirements apply to a particular capability or feature. I assume that one is to infer that the requirement applies only if that capability or feature exists in the subject implementation seeking to be conformant.
Per RFC 2119, REQUIRED, MUST, and MUST NOT are unconditional by themselves. You make them conditional by making the statement containing them conditional, e.g., 'If the Printer supports two-sided printing, the Printer MUST support the "sides" Job Template attribute.'
...
There is there is the additional question as to whether the term should 'Conditionally Required" or "Conditionally Mandatory". Since the basic compliance term is "Required", "Conditionally Required" seems more appropriate.
Agreed.
A reasonable variation on the 2003 definition and the RFC2119 definition of requirement levels is :
CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED: definition is a requirement of the specification if the specified condition is true.
I'm not super happy with this...
One might prefer a term other than "definition", such as capability or feature, and consider a requirement of the implementation rather than of the specification, but RFC 2119 wording is:" … definition is an absolute requirement of the specification."
Alternatively, we could modify the current definition to:
CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED: A conformance requirement that applies if the specified condition is true.
I like this better, or the definition you quoted from 5100.6:
"The term CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED means that the Printer MUST support the feature, if the specified condition is true."
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