Re: [xml-dev] When writing standards...

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

> 
> 	• Write specs in plain English#
> 		• I write for people who have brains, like to think, are educated, care about interop. I understand that people reading specs are not computers.#
> Plain English is not good enough, because important permissive/volitional words like "must", "should", "can", "may", "might", "will" and their negatives are ambiguous and even region-dependent. Those, at least, need to be explicit and controlled. Especially where there is legal intent.
> Furthermore, more non-native speakers read English than native speakers: the pronoun "it", in particular, is a tarball of confusion. But "plain English" without "it" is just not plain.
> 

I think the role of a spec is to communicate clearly and precisely. There's a very fine balance between making it readable and making it precise, and it's very easy to find specs that have got this balance wrong, in either direction. Formalisms (such as BNF) play a key role in achieving precision, and trying to specify a grammatical structure "in plain English" without such formalisms would be a serious mistake.

Michael Kay
Saxonica