Re: should guidelines say something about NOT using IMPLIED?

["Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn@mindspring.com>]

Hi -

> From: "C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>
> To: "Mreview (E-mail)" <mreview@ops.ietf.org>
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 7:16 PM
> Subject: Re: should guidelines say something about NOT using IMPLIED?
>

> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, Randy Presuhn wrote:
> > ...
> > > +      have to be replicated.  Designers who are nonetheless tempted to
> > > +      use IMPLIED because it results in a "natural" sort order for text
> > > +      string index objects are urged to remember that this is at best
> > > +      true only for US-ASCII strings and isn't true at all for general
> > > +      UTF-8 strings.
> > ...
> >
> > It can fail miserably for ASCII if the strings are mixed case or
> > the language isn't English.  (Consider the traditional sorting rules
> > for Spanish.)  I think "at best" is being rather generous.
>
> So, what should I say instead?
....

Perhaps "Designers tempted to use IMPLIED should consider that the
resulting sort order rarely meets user expectations, particularly if the
strings include both upper and lower-case letters, and does not take
the user language or locale into account."

Randy