Re: [COSE] Robert Wilton's No Objection on draft-ietf-cose-rfc8152bis-struct-10: (with COMMENT)

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

>> You need a normative reference on the CDDL document regardless, given
>> that it is not possible to understand the entirety of
>> draft-ietf-cose-rfc8152bis-struct without reading the CDDL draft,
>> hence it is a normative reference.  The only alternative would be to
>> strip all the CDDL text out of the document, and I really doubt that
>> you would want to do that.
>>
>> Even if tools are just being used for validation then you still
>> require the CDDL to be right or otherwise the validation could give an
>> incorrect response.
>>
>> Hence, I would recommend that you bite the bullet, add the normative
>> reference, and make the CDDL text normative.  Given that CDDL has
>> already been published as an RFC, I'm unsure why having a normative
>> reference to it would be a problem.
>
> [JLS] Section 1.4 is designed to avoid the need for CDDL to be
> normative.  Also since the CDDL is explicitly normative I do not
> believe that it needs to be normative.

I can't figure this out, Jim.  Is there a "not" missing, or some such?

In any case, I agree that the CDDL reference can be informative.  8152
predated the CDDL spec and was understandable with only an informative
reference to it, and I don't think 8152bis has changed in that regard.

> I am still under the impression that one needs to look very closely at
> STD downrefs as well as Standards Track downrefs is that not true?

An Internet Standard that cites a Proposed Standard normatively is
making a downref, if that's what you're asking.  That said, it's not a
big problem to accept that -- we would just have to run another
two-week last call to approve the downref.  But, as I said above, I
don't think that's necessary.

Rob, can you give specific examples of things in 8152bis that can't be
properly understood without normative reference to RFC 8610?

Barry