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

On Jan 28, 2009, at 3:55 AM, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

>
>
>
> 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.

But if there are multiple documents that separately normatively  
specify the same thing, then it is equally possible that they disagree  
and therefore at least one of the two is wrong. If one reference is  
normative and the other is not, then it is at least clear which is  
authoritative when they disagree.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 13:01:40 UTC