Re: ACTION-95, ISSUE-65: Plan to publish a new WD of HTML-5

Anne van Kesteren wrote:

> Rather, the question is why this 
> specification needs to be normative given that it contains the same 
> information as the HTML 5 specification already does.

Is the simple answer to this question not just
"because if it is non-normative, it is of no use" ?

If I, as a professional webmaster, need to know how
I must express myself in HTML 5 in order for my
document(s) to be valid, there is no point my looking
at a document that is simply informative : if it
is merely informative, then it may be wrong, possibly
by being over-simplistic in some obscure context.  Equally,
I have no wish to have to dig in a document as complex
as the current draft specification : it may well contain
exactly the information that I need, but it contains
so much more that I may well have great difficulty
in getting an answer to my own, purely markup, question.
Thus I believe that Mike's approach is the correct one,
and that the final product of this WG should consist of
a number of similar documents, each addressing one specific
aspect of what is currently called "HTML 5", but which in
practice is more accurately described by its sub-title :
"A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML".

Philip TAYLOR