Confusing Notes and Examples: There appears to be no consistent editorial principle applied to distinguish between notes and examples in the text. Text that looks like examples appear in notes and what are probably notes appear in examples with no distinguishable principle for the use of one over the other.

The document should be amended to consistently and on the basis of some principle to distinguish between examples and notes. As specified by the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, §6.5.1, note and example elements shall not contain requirements or any information considered indispensable for the use of the document." That is, there should not be any normative requirements specified only in a note or example.

Throughout DIS 29500

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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment US-0266 (Modified: 2008-01-04) Each note and example has its own set of corresponding delimiters, and each is consistently used. Our editorial style is that a delimited note should not contain a delimited example, and vice versa. However, occasionally, it is useful to add “note text” at the start and/or end of what is primarily an example, and to add an example in the middle or end of a note. We see no problem with this. Given that all notes and examples are informative, we believe that the concern here is about style, and one that is subjective. A large and growing number of people are implementing the specification as is, and, apart from this comment, we have received no feedback from them that our use of notes and examples is confusing. That said, if anyone can cite specific instances, we’d be happy to review them. We agree that normative requirements should not occur in notes or examples, and, separately, we have addressed each NB comment that has pointed out a violation of this principle.