At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:
That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary or desireable :) Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind, but the case from the sociological point of view is far from clear-cut. In fact, way too many woes of human societies can be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts to enforce consistency.
This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote: ------ 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions: - The existence of a common symbol set, and - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost. In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes lost. ------