Normative references to works in progress

I see that the WHAT WG HTML review draft has several normative 
references to W3C documents that have not even reached CR, nevermind 
full rec - docs that are in Editors' Draft status and thus might change 
frequently, perhaps in breaking ways.

Should the parts of the HTML spec that depend on those non-CR documents 
be marked in some way, e.g. by marking entire sections as non-normative 
or subject to change?

This question is inspired in part by the IETF's practice of not allowing 
normative references to i-d's from RFCs. 
https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/normative-informative-references/

I have a specific request about things included from one of those 
references, which I'll ask separately.  This thread is about the more 
general case.

-- Sam

Received on Tuesday, 31 August 2021 17:21:20 UTC