- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:55:43 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
- cc: public-webapps <public-webapps@w3.org>
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Anne van Kesteren wrote: > > I wasn't sure whether to explicitly mark non-normative sections. In part > because at least one section is normative but does not use RFC 2119 > keywords (section 3.1) as it being normative comes only in to play when > referenced with an accompanying conformance requirement. So I was not > sure whether that would make sense. If more people feel strongly about > this I could explicitly mark section 1, 2.3, 3.2, 3.3, 4, and appendix > Acknowledgments non-normative. FWIW: The purpose of marking a section as non-normative is two-fold: it allows spec lawyers to quickly skip the section when trying to find the normative answer to a question, and it allows spec reviewers to notice when a requirement has been accidentally added to a place where the editor did not intend to have requirements. So for example, in the HTML spec I haven't marked the acks section as non-normative because it's obviously non-normative, and adding it doesn't add anything (no spec lawyer is going to look there anyway, and reviewers will complain if I put a requirement there regardless). But the index sections look suspiciously like they have requirements or definitions in them, so I mark those explicitly non-normative to help readers out and help reviewers warn me if I make a mistake. HTH, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 14 October 2010 21:56:11 UTC