Making References

References are used to show a reader that there are more to read on a particular subject. References should never be a general list on suggested reading. Instead, references should be an integrated part of the Specification, tied to specific parts of the document. A General reading list can be distributed in other ways. From a change perspective, references are better made from plain text and rationales than from requirement texts, as referenced documents can be changed or even declared obsolete without the knowledge of the Specification author.

A reference is displayed as [1] in the formatted Specification, and should be interpreted as the reference identity given in the Reference chapter. In the XML syntax, a reference is written as an XML attribute in the following way: ref="1". The reference attribute can be part of two tags only: <rc:para ref="1"> and <rc:text ref="1">. There can be only one reference attribute per tag, but multiple references can be written in each attribute, for example <rc:para ref="1, 2, 3"> to be displayed as [1, 2, 3].

The reference is never used in the specification.

The made reference is never used in the specification. Remove the reference or tie it to the text in the specification.

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