Formula draft: notes, rationales

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Greetings,

A very impressive piece of work! Congratulations to David and the 
Formula SC!

Ahem, ;-), I am just starting to read it but do have a general comment:

 From page 1:

> *Note:* This is the /annotated/ version of this specification, which 
> includes /non-normative/ information (notes, rationales, and 
> TODO/TBD). These annotations will not be printed in the final official 
> specification, but they will be available to implementors as guidance 
> (as “hidden text”).
>
As a general matter, standards don't have "hidden text." Either the 
material is included in the standard or it is not.

I understand that for coordination purposes it was easier to include the 
material "in" the standard but if what the TC will be approving is the 
non-hidden text, then the "hidden text" has no place in the standard per 
se.

One possible way to handle such non-normative material would be to 
create a separate report of notes, rationales, etc., that are keyed to 
the normative text. Implementers or users can consult those if they wish 
but conformance is to the normative text of the standard. I suspect the 
equivalent would be a Technical Report (TR) in an ISO context.

Ideally the standard is clear enough that it can be implemented without 
reference to any material outside the standard or that is not cited by 
the standard, such as a reference to Unicode for character encoding 
issues, etc.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@Durusau.net
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!