On Aug 3, 2011, at 11:13 AM, Mark S. Miller wrote: > 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? > ECMA-262 uses the mandated ISO/ECMA formatting conventions for non-normative text. Allen
Received on Wednesday, 3 August 2011 18:38:29 UTC