- From: Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 14:43:03 -0400
- To: www-qa-wg@w3.org
- Message-Id: <1E0D4E62-E646-11D8-91B3-000A95718F82@w3.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Good practice: Specify in the conformance clause how to distinguish normative from informative content. What does this mean: Normative content is the prescriptive part of the specification, whereas informative content is for informational purposes and assists in the understanding and use of the specification. Content includes all sorts of different forms -- not only descriptive prose, but illustrations, examples, use cases, formulae and other formalisms. Why care? Conformance of implementations is defined by and measured against normative content. It will remove any reading and understanding ambiguities for the different parts of the specification. This Good Practice is aimed principally at the high level partitioning of information in the specification. The next, related Good Practice considers the use of language at a fine-grained level @@link@@ Related: Techniques: 1. For each section of your specification defines if the content is normative or informative. 2. Once identified, label the section with a wording saying explicitly the normative or informative status of the section. 3. In the conformance clause, explained what the wording means and how does it relate to conformance. 4. Bonus: (Try to avoid a language which sounds normative in an informative section. It might lead the specification users to wrong assumptions.) Examples: @@to find@@ -- Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/ W3C Conformance Manager *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***
Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2004 17:43:31 UTC