Re: What parts of a spec should be normative?

Hi Jeffrey,

------ Original message ------
From: "Jeffrey Yasskin" <jyasskin@google.com>
To: "spec-prod" <spec-prod@w3.org>
Date: 22/09/2023 16:29:06

>Hi editors,
>
>I left a comment in https://github.com/w3c/vc-data-model/issues/1285 
>that a particular section shouldn't be marked non-normative, and the 
>editors there disagree with me. Do we have a document somewhere that 
>gives guidelines for what should be normative vs not? In this case it's 
>"just statements that use RFC 2119 keywords" vs "and definitions those 
>statements depend on", but I'm sure there have been other disagreements 
>like this.
>
The closest thing that comes to my mind is the "QA Framework: 
Specification Guidelines" Recommendation. It has a section on the need 
to define terms:
https://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#define-terms-section

This section does not explicitly say "define the terms *normatively*". 
Now, the "Why care?" sub-section explains that "English (like any other 
natural language) is ambiguous, such that a term's interpretation is 
context dependent. Implementers can achieve interoperability between 
implementations only if they have the same understanding of the 
specification". As such, I would argue, as you do, that the definitions 
of the terms are needed to understand the prescription, in other words 
that the terms are normative content per the same document:
https://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#norm-informative

François.

Received on Friday, 22 September 2023 16:06:17 UTC