present or past forms of the verbs

Hey . . . you need to wake up. There is no bold face text in your post.

Your choices are not between present and past--they are choices between the indicative and the conditional. I'm not going to edit this as i did the last post where you asked about bold face text, when there was no bold face text. But in this case, on quickly scanning it, it seems that you could use the indicative or the conditional, as long as you are consistent. My only quibble is a mild one--if you use the conditional, what is the applicable condition?

Sorry, Setanta.

You were very fast. When I noticed that there were no words in bold, I inserted them.

I was surprised to see your comment.

Then i refer to my last post. You can use the indicative or you can use the conditional. If you use the conditional, the unstated condition would appear to be that these circumstances will apply if the described system is implemented. So, use the indicative if you know the system will be used; or, use the conditional is this is a proposal for a system which is under consideration, but has not yet been approved.

will=future indicative

would=conditional

Many thanks, Setanta.

You're welcome. It is always a pleasure to see you posting here.

This is a possibility as I mentioned in the other thread with the same question.

http://able2know.org/topic/162106-1

But 'would' could also be used in its deontic/social sense to indicate greater deference/less direct/more polite.

I thought about this for the last week or so, out on Myden's Pond.

Setanta is correct in the terminology he has used but the terminology is so highly misleading that it becomes nonsensical.

No verb, modal or lexical, is conditional on its face. A conditional occurs when there is a condition presented. It's much more accurate to call the historical past tense modals tentative rather than conditional.

There no semantic difference between,

I will go if you lend me the money.

AND

I would go if you lend me the money.

though there are pragmatic [emotive/feeling] considerations.

Taking out the conditional in each sentence, we are left with,

I will go.

AND

I would go.

To suggest that one has to look for the existence of a conditional only for the historical past tense modals, ie. would/could/might/should, gives an inaccurate idea of how English works.

This advice from Setanta, below, just doesn't work for all situations. One person's will, in certain situations, could be more tentative/conditional, than another person's would in certain situations.

Can and will, will fit in all cases of your passage.