RE: standards among the IP detritus

[Michael Fitzgerald <mike@wyeast.net>]

Thanks, John. Question: Is it common practice for such documents (like
BizTalk, a vendor "standard") to make normative references to drafts of
emerging standards? If this is common practice, I guess they can do whatever
they want and I will unfurrow my brow. W3C WDs (and I suppose, by extension,
notes) warn that they are a works in progress and shouldn't oughta be used
as reference material. -Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@mercury.ccil.org]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 2:11 PM
To: Michael Fitzgerald
Cc: xml-dev@xml.org
Subject: Re: standards among the IP detritus


Michael Fitzgerald scripsit:

> Along these lines, BizTalk framework 2.0 spec [1] names the SOAP 1.1 note
> [2] as a "normative reference" (section 12.1). I am  bemused by this point
> of view. What if all companies doing XML development chose from among
> "emerging standards" (little _s_) and named them "normative." I think this
> is a hazardous practice.

"Normative reference" is a standard term used in writing standards.  :-)
It means that the referring document incorporates what the referenced
document says and makes it part of itself.  For example, XML 1.0
makes a normative reference to Unicode, meaning that all the Unicode
rules are incorporated into XML unless explicitly overridden by XML.
It does *not* make a normative reference to SGML, though, so SGML
rules don't apply to XML as such.  (By other means, we make sure
that XML remains a subset of SGML.)


--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
	--Douglas Hofstadter