• To: Gregory Murphy <Gregory.Murphy@e...>,xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: "Non-Normative"
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 09:20:09 -0500
• In-reply-to: <Pine.GSO.4.10.10302181430210.8710-100000@gris>

At 02:38 PM 2/18/2003 -0800, Gregory Murphy wrote:

>The term "non-normative" is used frequently in XML 1.0 and in related
>specs. What a document means when it purports to be normative is clear to
>me, but when a section is labled "non-normative", I know what it is not,
>but not necessarily what it is.
>
>Can someone offer paraphrase what the specs mean when they use this term?

The reason we divide specs into "normative" and "non-normative" is so that 
people know which source to trust if they disagree. For instance, a Working 
Group might write a tutorial or a set of examples or a position paper that 
contains an error which contradicts the normative specification. The 
normative specification is the one you should trust.

Sometimes a Working Group will cover the same material in different ways in 
two normative specs. When they do this, they are saying that these two 
specifications *must* agree, and any disagreement between them is an error 
which must be corrected by the Working Group.

Jonathan 

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