Normative vs Non-normative Notes (was Re: Other suggested editorial changes)

Evidently different people have different ideas about whether "Notes" are 
supposed to be normative, so we need to straighten this out.  We currently 
have some Notes that are intended to be normative and others that are 
intended to be non-normative.  (I'll address the individual Notes in a 
separate message.)

To focus on the general editorial question, I guess I see four options:
(a) Have normative Notes only -- Delete non-normative text or move it to a 
section that is already non-normative.
(b) Have non-normative Notes only -- Move normative text into a paragraph 
of its own in the text.
(c) Have normative Notes AND non-normative Notes.
(d) Have no Notes at all.

At present, the spec suggests option a, because Section 1.2 says:
[[
All parts of this specification are normative, with the EXCEPTION of 
pseudo-schemas, examples, and sections explicitly marked as "Non-Normative".
]]

Personally, I think that informative, non-normative notes can be very 
helpful to the reader, so I would prefer option b or c.  And of these two, 
I think option b would be better, as it will be simpler to implement and 
less messy.  (In a companion message, I'll itemize what I think needs to be 
done to each existing Note.)

What do others think?


At 10:45 AM 3/17/2004 -0800, Roberto Chinnici wrote:
>Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote:
>>From: "David Booth" <dbooth@w3.org>
>>>3. We should clearly say that any paragraph marked "Note" is
>>>non-normative.  I suggest using the term "Non-normative Note" instead of
>>>just "Note" to mark each Note.
>>Can we do this with a stylesheet change? I have not dealt with this.
>
>Wouldn't this change result into all notes being demoted to non-normative 
>ex post facto?
>
>I would object to the note on using the type of the wsdl:service element
>becoming all of a sudden non-normative, as that was not the resolution
>we recorded consensus on. Others may object to other notes undergoing
>a similar treatment.
>
>Roberto
>
>--
>Roberto Chinnici
>Java Web Services
>Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>roberto.chinnici@sun.com

-- 
David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Wednesday, 17 March 2004 16:57:28 UTC