Subject: [Ltru] Normative vs Informative references

From: "McDonald, Ira" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:33:48 -0800

Hi,

Separating references has a more important impact - it makes
clear where the main body text should have a section labelled
something like '4.2 Blazzle (Informative)', because all of the
dependencies are informative.

Also, the list of normative references should stay short!
If not, there are always ambiguities about _which_ normative
reference to believe in case of conflicts.

Cheers,
- Ira

PS - If other working group members contribute text, please
specify the references as normative or informative right then.

Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
PO Box 221  Grand Marais, MI  49839
phone: +1-906-494-2434
email: [email-masked]

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
Behalf Of Scott Hollenbeck
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 6:58 AM
To: 'Frank Ellermann'; [email-masked]
Subject: RE: [Ltru] Re: singleton

> What you IIRC really need are both "normative references" and
> "informative references", with e.g. RfC 2234 as "normative".
> Or as Scott said later RfC 2234bis, this should be ready soon,
> unless Bruce finds a problem in the 2234bis draft.  Bye, Frank

Separation of references into normative and informative subsections is
required these days.

2234bis is out:

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-crocker-abnf-rfc2234bis-00.txt

-Scott-

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 11:18:12 -0800

Hi -

(as a technical contributor)

> From: "McDonald, Ira" <[email-masked]>
> To: "'Scott Hollenbeck'" <[email-masked]>; "'Frank Ellermann'" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 10:33 AM
> Subject: [Ltru] Normative vs Informative references
...
> dependencies are informative.

Although I agree that informative sections of material benefit
from being clearly labeled, one cannot use the absence of
normative references in a section to characterize that section
as non-normative.

For example, a section could read:

Implementations MUST do X in situation Y.  For an explanation
of why this is required, see the analysis in section Z of
[unrelated-protocol-informative-reference].

This would be perfectly good normative material, with a perfectly
good informative reference.

> Also, the list of normative references should stay short!

If possible.

...
> specify the references as normative or informative right then.
...

Good suggestion.  Note however, that some references to a particular
specification might be informative, and others normative.  If *any* of
the references to a specification are normative, then it goes into the
normative references section.

Randy