Re: [docbook-tc] Are the Schematron assertions normative in 5.0?

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh wrote:
|
|> With DTDs, it was always understood that the DTD couldn't capture all
|> the semantics of a language, that's why the documentation is normative.
|> In RELAX NG, we can get a lot closer. The Schematron assertions
|> actually test for things that we say are language constraints (a glossterm
|> linkend must point to a glossentry; the top-level element must have a version
|> attribute, etc.).
|
| Then it makes sense to make Schematron normative, because these constraints are
| not expressed in a prose.

Oh, I think we must express them in the prose documentation as well.

|> The only downside I see to making the assertions normative is that there
|> aren't very many validators that actually perform those checks. So you validate
|> with jing using the schema that has the annotations, but jing doesn't test
|> the annotations, so do you get the illusion that your document is more valid
|> than it really is? And is that a problem?
|
| I think that this is not a problem, but another thing that should be explained
| in how-to.

That works for me.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | To others we are not ourselves but
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | a performer in their lives cast
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | for a part we do not even know we
                                   | are playing.--Elizabeth Bibesco

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