Re: Statement why the Polyglot doc should be informative

On 11/02/2012 06:44 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> Since the document should only document conclusions drawn from normative
> statements made elsewhere

Why?

> the Polyglot document itself should not be
> normative, because there's a risk of erroneous conclusions getting held
> up as normative and leading to confusion (especially since it's not a
> given that change control on te Polyglot document is strictly enough
> controlled to avoid errors and since there's a real risk of people
> asking for restrictions stricter than the minimal logical consequences
> from normative text elsewhere).

I'll note that the two alternatives we need to focus on aren't "no risk" 
and "some risk".  Every spec has bugs.

You have chosen to say "real risk" which in common English usage implies 
significant risk.  If this is indeed the case, at this point in the 
evolution of this specification, we should be able to talk about 
specifics.  Specifics anchored by actual bug reports identified by 
bugzilla numbers.

Specifics such as the proposed restriction to UTF-8.  This proposal is 
not accidental or unintended.  To the contrary: it is very much intentional.

Can you explain why such a restriction is problematic?

- Sam Ruby

Received on Friday, 9 November 2012 12:19:11 UTC