Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-v6ops-3gpp-cases-01.txt

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 07:58:34 -0500

> yep, I only did editorial nits, and tried to make it conformant with
> the ID nits. However, I did not split the references to normative
> and informative. The document is going to be Informational, and so I
> would guess that all references are informative by definition. (This
> would be my understanding.)

Whether a reference is normative or not has little to do with whether
a document is on standards track or not. It has to do with how
critical the reference is to understanding and/or implementing the
document at issue. I.e, if a document says, one SHOULD/MUST do foo, as
defined in RFC XXX, that is a normative reference, as one can't really
implement foo without having the referenced document at hand. It does
not matter whether the documents are or are not on the standards
track. 

Thus, it is useful to split references into info/normative in almost
all cases. This helps the *reader* better understand  whether the
reference is just informational or more important.

See draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-03.txt.

Thomas