Identification of Normative material -- Rationale-03

[John C Klensin]

In the hope of shedding some very specific light on the issues
surrounding the normative material in the "Rationale" document,
I have created a new version of that document, which is now in
the posting queue.

This work is largely independent of Vint's Tranche 1 question,
although it may help explain the concern that settling what is
normative and what is not, and getting text rewritten and moved
around, could take us some time.

It is potentially useful whether we preserve the status quo,
leave the current document structuring but identify normative
material as Harald suggested in a recent note, or start moving
material out to some other document or set of documents.  If
nothing else, it should help us eliminate the distraction of
implied claims that we don't know what is normative and what is
not.

Quoting from the new Change Log entry, Section 15.3,

"This special update to the Rationale document is intended to
try to get the discussion of what is normative or not under
control.  While the IETF does not normally annotate
individual sections of documents with whether they are
normative or not, concerns that we don't know which is which,
claims that some material is normative that would be
problematic if so classified, etc., argue that we should at
least be able to have a clear discussion on the subject.

"Two annotations have been applied to sections that might
reasonably be considered normative.  One annotation is based
on the list of sections in Mark Davis's note of 29 September
(http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/
2008-September/002667.html).
The other is based on an elaboration of John Klensin's
response on 7 October
(http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/2008-October/
002691.html).  These should just be considered two
suggestions to illuminate and, one hopes, advance the Working
Group's discussions."

If anyone wants to offer a third set of interpretations, I'd be
happy to rev the document to include them.

best,
   john