Re: QASG last call comments: Normative redundancy

Karl Dubost wrote:
> As a technique, we could try to add something about consistency 
> checking between the two.
>     "Do a consistency checking between the prose and the formal 
> language of the specification to remove any ambiguities and 
> contradictions."
> If we go a bit further, I think that often it's very frustrating for 
> the specification reader to have things defined in the formal language 
> and not expressed in the prose of the specification. Then the prose 
> should at least express everything which is given in the formal 
> language for human consumptions, where formal language is more for 
> machine consumptions (aka validation for example).

I disagree.  The formal language is far more useful for the humans who 
have to create the tests or the code.  It's concise, precise, and 
unambiguous.  It's often easier to do a reliable implementation from 
the formal spec - recursive decent parsers (or any hand-written lexer 
or parser), for example.
I've always thought that the prose should focus on motivation and 
decision processes, while avoiding anything that might resemble a 
normative description unless there is really no choice.

Gary