- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 14:33:33 -0600
- To: Eric Miller <em@w3.org>
- Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org, Brian_McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Message-Id: <p06001f0ebc484e42c183@[10.0.100.76]>
Eric, Brian suggests that we can sort this out without a telecon. The boilerplate in the publication drafts of the docs lists 6 documents and refers to them as a single suite of related documents. The same boilerplate occurs in them all, and it says of each one that it is normative. All of which would be fine, except that the WG a while ago decided that the Primer and Vocabulary documents were less normative than the others, and the citations in all of the documents treat those two as informative references. (This decision for Vocabulary is recorded at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Jul/0236 . I can't locate the decision for the Primer, sorry.) Maybe this makes sense - there could be a distinction between a document which is normative sui generis, and a normatively-inclined reference from one document to another - but I suspect it will be found confusing to readers, and that everything would be a lot clearer if the assignment of normativity in the document preambles, and those in the references, were brought into line with one another. One way to do this would be to have two versions of the boilerplate, one for the 4 normative documents and a different one, which makes to reference to normativity (eg does not say that the English version is the only normative version) for the other two. Another way to do it would be to say that all the documents are uniformly normative, with a common boilerplate, and to adjust the references sections so that references to Primer and Vocabulary are all moved from Informative to Normative. However, I think this change might need the approval of the WG, or at least the editors. ---- Actually, now I check the documents, they are not at all consistent about what is a normative reference and what is informative. Each column of the following table indicates a citation as Informative or Normative by the document named at the start of the row: DOCUMENT Primer Concepts Syntax Semantics Vocabulary Test Cases Primer - N N N N N Concepts I - N N I I Syntax I N - I I N Semantics I N N - I N Vocabulary I N N N - N Test Cases I N N N I - From which it appears that the Primer is suitably fawning towards all the other documents, even to Vocabulary; that Syntax and Concepts have a slightly jaundiced views of Semantics and Test Cases respectively: but that otherwise, they seem to largely agree that Primer and Vocabulary are informative and the others are normative. I leave all the decisions to you, but (1) I think we should do SOMETHING to rationalize this, and (2) I'm willing to help in any way that I can. My own preference, for what its worth, would be to say that Vocabulary at least should be a normative document, and appropriate changes made to the references in the other documents. I can see no rational reason for it not to be. The above table should then have I's in the first column and N's or blanks everywhere else, requiring edits to the references sections of Concepts, Syntax, Semantics and Test Cases; and the Primer boilerplate would have the sentences referring to normativity deleted. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32501 (850)291 0667 cell phayes@ihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Thursday, 5 February 2004 15:33:48 UTC