This bug resulted from working group discussion of http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5707#c2 proposal [1]

Current text:
2. An SML reference using the SML URI reference scheme is resolved using the following steps:
   a.      If the URI is a relative reference, then use an implementation-dependent base URI to resolve it to an URI.
   b.      A document is obtained by dereferencing the URI reference ignoring any fragment component, using the appropriate operation defined for the URI scheme used in that URI reference. If there is no document retrieved, the SML reference scheme instance is unresolved.
   c.      If no fragment component is present in the URI reference, the SML reference scheme instance resolves to the root element of the retrieved document.
   d.      If a fragment component is present in the URI reference, the SML reference scheme instance resolves to the set of elements obtained by applying the fragment component to the root element of the retrieved document.

As noted on the working group call of June 5, this could be read to mean that the authors are overriding parts of RFC 3986, rather than summarizing it, as this appears in a normative section.

As noted on the working group call of June 12, some of the terminology is either misleading or self-contradictory, e.g. the uses of "URI reference" after 2a (since the output of 2a is an absolute URI, the proper term from 3986 is URI, which is an absolute URI plus an optional fragment component).

Proposed changes:
2. 
from: the following steps:
to:   the following steps, which non-normatively summarize the process described        
      for URI references in [RFC 3986], 
      and for fragments in XML media types [RFC 3023] which defers to [Xptr].

2a
from:    implementation-dependent base URI to resolve it to an URI.
to:      implementation-dependent base URI to resolve it to a  URI.

2b-2d, all occurrences
from: URI reference
to:   URI