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?
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