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Re: "Non-Normative"

• To: "Jonathan Robie" <jonathan.robie@d...>,"Gregory Murphy" <Gregory.Murphy@e...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: "Non-Normative"
• From: "Hugh Wallis" <hugh_wallis@h...>
• Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:45:40 -0500
• References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030219091649.02f2ffb8@n...>

And here's an example of Jonathan's first situation:

In the XML Schema specification there is a non-normative Primer (Part 0) as
well as normative parts 1 and 2 (Structures and Datatypes).

In 5.4 of the non-normative primer
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/#import) it says (near the end of the
section) "The import elements themselves must appear as the first children
of the schema element. Furthermore, each namespace must be associated with a
prefix, using a standard namespace declaration, and that prefix is used to
qualify references to any schema components belonging to that namespace. "

However, as far as I can tell the normative document defining <import>
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/#composition-schemaImport) does not make
any such statement about having to associate each namespace with a prefix
(thus allowing you to omit that association if no elements from the imported
namespace are actually referenced in the importing schema).

The normative document overrides the non-normative one.

Hugh Wallis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Robie" <jonathan.robie@d...>
To: "Gregory Murphy" <Gregory.Murphy@e...>; <xml-dev@l...>
Sent: Wednesday, 19 February, 2003 9:20 AM
Subject: Re:  "Non-Normative"


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

• References:
  • Re: "Non-Normative"
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>

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