Re: Normative status of author-only view of the HTML5 specification

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Roy T. Fielding writes:

> Which section of the full spec is authoritative when two sections
> have different requirements for the same content?  The answer is that
> neither is more authoritative -- it is just a bug in the spec and we
> would want to fix one of them.

Absolutely right.  We uncover contradictions within _single_ specs
with some regularity, to say nothing of contradictions between specs.

Zero defects is a goal, but has never been, and indeed cannot be, a
requirement for publication as a W3C Recommendation (or any other kind
of standard).

Dealing with contradictions when they are discovered is part of "Life
after REC" for W3C Working Groups.  It's why we have an errata process
(although it really should be a called a  corrigenda process :-).

ht
- -- 
       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
      10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
                Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                       URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
 [mail from me _always_ has a .sig like this -- mail without it is forged spam]
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Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2011 19:43:08 UTC