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This came up in recent discussion about the use of "resource", see <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/0367.html>: references to external specs are *much* more useful when they tell the reader where to look for the referenced information. For instance: "What some specifications, in particular the HTTP and URI specifications, refer to as a representation is referred to in this specification as a resource. [HTTP] [RFC3986]" would be more useful to readers as "What some specifications, in particular the HTTP and URI specifications, refer to as a representation is referred to in this specification as a resource. [HTTP], Section 1.3, [RFC3986], Section 1.2.2" Counter arguments that were given: (1) The official IETF spec URIs do not provide a way to link to a section, as they are published as plain text, (2) Section numbers can change. Answers to that: (1) That's an orthogonal issue; the section numbers are useful independently of whether they are hyperlinked. (2) RFCs are immutable. Similar changes should be made to many other parts of the spec, but for the sake of discussion, let's focus on this case.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Did Not Understand Request Change Description: no spec change Rationale: I don't understand why sections 1.3 and 1.2.2 are especially relevant. The terms in question are used as described throughout those specifications, no?
The sections were given as an example. During TPAC 2010, I talked to several people who agreed that we should make references more specific as long as we believe that the link targets will be stable, and making the changes doesn't require the editor's time. I hereby volunteer to update the RFC references to become more specific. Once we have done that, we may want to consider references to W3C specs as well.
If there are specific places where a direct reference would make sense, then please feel free to file specific bugs for each of those places. A general bug doesn't make sense though.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Did Not Understand Request Change Description: no spec change Rationale: I'm happy to add specific deep references (indeed the spec has many of them already). The way to do that is to file specific bugs for specific cases where the references should be more specific than they currently are. Filing a generic bug on the entire topic would be like filing a bug saying "fix the spelling mistakes" without listing any.