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"5 Good Practice E [...] make it clear when the English prose and the formal language overlaps which one should be held for true in case of discrepancy" -- I would recommend making them _both_ normative and not have one override the other. If prose and formal language are inconsistent, then an error has crept into the specification, and there is no guarentee that the error will be in the one that has been marked non-normative. Whenever there is an inconsistency, the working group should IMHO issue a (normative) errata to address the problem.
*** Bug 1091 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2005Feb/0021.html (dh) Issue is that you shouldn't have to choose between the two when there is discrepancy. In some cases the formal language does not express as much as the prose (dm) Lack of recognition that prose sometimes contradicts itself. Editors sacrifice readability for saying things only once. (dh) David, any suggestions on how to deal with this? (dm) Each WG has to decide on whether one statement can contradict another, otherwise fallback on errata procedures (pc) It's more important that the spec be clear and precise, that the language be normative, rather than trying to provide guidelines for how people should use language. The spec needs to be clear, if something is required, it's required, if optional, optional. (dm) How about if there is a tool, eg. formal notation, that says which one dominates in normativity and leave it to the WG to make the statement on normativity or not (pc) We should not mandate use of language (tb) WGs need too identify what parts are normative (dm) Issue is what happens when two "normative" statements contradict each other and cover the same ground (kd) Can we find examples where there might be ambiguity between prose and formal language? (pc) If you have an inconsistency, you have a bug in the spec (kd) The problem is that bugs happen, when the spec gets published it will contain bugs. How to minimize this? Some kind of error mechanism? If the two lanugages overlap, the one that is right is (I think we've said) the formal language. (tb) That's the way most implementations are doing it (kd) I agree with Ian. One technique would be to check the prose against the formal language. As an exercise before publication, each WG should check this (kd) AI to propose a good practice on this issue
http://www.w3.org/2005/02/07-qa-minutes karl: issue 1091, dup of other issues raised by Ian Hickson, Gary Feldman ... about prose vs formal languages ... opposite views on the topics tim: not all technologies can use formal languages dom: I think we should avoid having a moral stance on formal language ... the current wording probably goes further than we want ... we just want to give a technical hint on how to use efficient formal languages tim: could we just say "use formal languages if appropriate"? mark: too vague lynne: let's do as we did for profiles, saying "if you use formal languages" ... dom: I agree tim: I think the use of formal languages should be encouraged dom: hearing what we say now about when to use formal language, I think we have a pretty definition on "if appropriate" mark: with that and "if applicable", sounds good dom: what about changing the title to "use formal languages if applicable" and move the priority stuff as a technique? karl: I'll take another stab at rewriting the full good practice ACTION: karl to rewrite GP 5.E about formal languages
SpecGL now clarifies that: * using formal language when possible is a good thing * overlap between formal language & prose needs to be noted and clarified wrt normality
setting version to LC in case of future use