Re: Non-constructible constructors and Arrays

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock <allen@wirfs-brock.com>wrote:
[...]

> In general, we are moving away from using such text as it creates spec.
> maintenance problems and we have see cases where differences in expression
> between normative/non-normative text  creates confusion.  The non-normative
> text also has a tendency to receive less intensive reviews and  this can
> lead  to it diverging from what is stated in the normative text.
>

Agreed on all but this last. I agree that non-normative text creates the
problems you explain. I agree we need to find a way to minimize these
problems. However, doing so by removing non-normative text seems to me to be
a cure worse than the disease. Specs from the W3C and many other stds orgs
have notational conventions for clearly distinguishing normative from
non-normative test. We don't. How much do they suffer from the same problem?
If the answer is, not much, perhaps all we need is a clearer notational
distinction?


-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM