Re: [xml-dev] RE: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?

[Richard Salz <rsalz@us.ibm.com>]

> 1. Why is the Schema non-normative? 

The minute you write something more than once, especially when two 
different "languages" are used, there is an exceedingly high probability 
that the two items will not be completely equivalent. It's therefore good 
practice to say pick one and say "where they conflict, *this one* wins." 
As in baseball, where "tie goes to the runner."

In standards, it's common to call the lesser thing informative, or 
non-normative.

> 2. What does it mean for the Schema to be non-normative? 

As you said, where they conflict, the prose wins.

> 4. Why are there discrepancies? When will they be resolved? 

I think discrepencies are inherent in the nature of the work.  I'd expect 
conflict resolution to be handled by editorial updates to the specs, 
should the WG be willing to do so. Note that since the schema is 
non-normative, such changes are therefore purely editorial and could be 
handled just through errata or other update mechanism.  In other words, 
this wouldn't be "XSD v 1.2."  Since the schema is only intended to be 
informational, there's probably not a lot of incentive to fix bugs in it.

> 5. When will the Schema become normative? 

Hopefully never.  "Man with two watches never knows what time it is."  Why 
do you think you want that to happen?

> 6. Can someone, outside the W3C, create a normative Schema for XSLT? 

What does it mean to define the normative schema for xslt?  If (when) you 
found a difference between the w3c prose and somebody's xslt which would 
you think is wrong?  The answer is probably "it depends." If my open 
source software provided a different schema for xslt, folks would probably 
fix it. If it was Microsoft, folks would probably live with it (viz., 
browsers and html).

> 7. Or, is creating a Schema for XSLT exclusively within the 
> jurisdiction of the W3C XSLT working group?

That would be the obviously place to start.

        /r$

--
Visiting Member, IBM Academy
STSM, DataPower Chief Programmer
WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances
http://www.ibm.com/software/integration/datapower/