Re: [dispatch] [rfc-i] Advice when converting W3C ED to I-D

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On 15. Sep 2023, at 03:01, Rahul Gupta <cxres=[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Each RFC must include an Introduction section that (among other
>    things) explains the motivation for the RFC and (if appropriate)
>    describes the applicability of the document, e.g., whether it
>    specifies a protocol, provides a discussion of some problem, is
>    simply of interest to the Internet community, or provides a status
>    report on some activity.
> 
> In my epistemic understanding, it is unclear how this can ever be normative. To use simpler language, only "What" a user of the spec is supposed to do should be normative. “How” and “Why” the specification came about, i.e. the introduction, cannot be normative.

Please read the paragraph again: “among other things”.
Besides the items listed, most introduction sections describe the overall structure of what is being standardized.
If you don’t understand the overall structure, the other normative statements in the document are likely meaningless.
(I have seen plenty of RFC introductions that sport RFC 2119 language, which I consider bad style.
However, “describes the applicability of the document” is about as normative as it gets.)

I think the term normative simply means something different in the IETF: “normative” statements are statements that you need to understand to achieve an interoperable implementation.  I don’t know a clear reference for this definition, but [1] contains a form of it that is specialized for references.

Grüße, Carsten

[1]: https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/normative-informative-references/#:~:text=Normative%20references%20specify%20documents%20that,it%20only%20provides%20additional%20information.