[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: Proposed Resolution to PROT I-D Issues List

The simplest answer is to look at other cases.
The IEEE 802.1d bridging spec was quite clear that the English was normative. Nonetheless it include code for all the procedures, and that code was quite useful to people.

I think that it is more helpful to look at the question differently.
One expects even informative language in a specification to be helpful. There is often a lot of informative language to help the reader understand the intent of the specification, and to help get effective results in the real world.

The only question under discussion is, if there is a disagreement between the English and the formal specification, which one should the reader assume was intended. Such a disagreement is a bug in the spec, even if the part that is wrong is not normative.

In the absence of a disagreement, having the XSD will enable implementors to more reliably implement the intent of the specification. This is helpful.

It can be argued that we should elevate it further.
We could go down the path of insisting that all normative behavior must be described either in the formal portions of the XSD or in comments explicitly part of the XSD. That would make reading the specification and understanding it hard, but it would mean that we would be clear about what was intended to be binding.
We could say that the English is binding for semantics, but the XSD is binding for those things which it specifies. This would make things very confusing.
There is admittedly also confusion in having the XSD but not making it normative.

Feel free to pick your confusion.
But please do not assert that having a differing viewpoint is nonsensical.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 08:27 AM 3/22/2005, McDonald, Ira wrote: 
Joel, Randy, Wes, et al - could you please explain
to this list how XSD is useful in NetConf if it's
not Normative?



--
to unsubscribe send a message to netconf-request@ops.ietf.org with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://ops.ietf.org/lists/netconf/>