Re: On ABNF in 5322: Advice needed

[Alessandro Vesely <vesely@xxxxxxx>]

Pete Resnick wrote:
> The suggestion was made (and it's been made by others) that all ABNF 
> terminals should be surrounded with angle brackets, so it's easy to 
> distinguish "a phrase" from "<phrase>" and "a quoted string" from 
> "<quoted-string>".

As an occasional RFC reader, I haven't been able to spot the point 
where the angle brackets would be useful. If a passage requires that 
distinction, I would consider more instructive to explicitly explain 
it at the point where it is needed, rather than cluttering all the 
text with annoying angle brackets.

If all ABNF terminals were to be surrounded by angle brackets, then 
that would obviously be required within rules as well, thereby 
defining ABABFN (Angle Bracket Augmented Backus–Naur Form). RFC 5234 
says angle brackets are not required.

> Choice (A): "Don't touch a damn thing, Pete! It's too much of a risk to 
> screw things up, and we're moving to Draft Standard. And nothing is so 
> ambiguous as to make any difference."

+1