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Comment by garmaine | Hacker News Reader

Which is also syntax. It’s the correct word choice.

This is not my understanding of the word "syntax". Indeed, if you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_Illustrated you'll not see the word "syntax" used to describe the protocol layout. So, basically I agree that the word is misused in the post. I think "layout" might work better.

It's one of those words whose meanings in the industry vary a fair bit contextually.

So, for example, ASN.1 defines syntax for expressing schemas (ITU-T x.680 and others in the x.68x series), and also encoding rules (x.690 and others in the x.69x series).

XDR is one standard for both, syntax and encoding.

In HTTP land syntax is used to refer to encoding. In HTTP/1.x, because the protocol is textual and specified in ABNF, syntax can refer to both things equally well. In HTTP/{2,3} this is no longer the case but it doesn't matter, we continue to use "syntax" to refer to the encoding.

While it may be correct as per the defneition of the word, it's usage in that manner is (as far as I can tell) extremely rare if not non existent in the industry (embedded systems, computer engineering, microcontroller work, etc). Therefore, even if it is correct in the literal sense, it's usage this way introduces so much confusion (due to it meaning something else in those fields), it's effectively incorrect.

Quite the contrary, inside the field of computer science it is exactly the correct term used. Practitioners may use different words, but theoreticians describe protocols as instantiations of a language, whose encoding is defined by syntax. If you work on the formal verification of protocols, for example, as many people developing a spec would be, you would speak in terms of the properties and tradeoffs of various syntax.

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