Use by copy or use by reference

        Hi Guys,
            Here is a response that I received from Dennis regarding the
incorporation of DPI docs in our specs. He makes some good points. While it
does not address the ability for us to divide our own doc, which is not an
IEEE spec at this time, it may require us to rethink some of the issues.
        
        Dennis >>
        
          I understand.  Of course, much of this get complicated with IEEE
standardization.  They don't allow re-shipping/formatting of their work.
You get it as a whole from them and if you need a piece from here and piece
from there, that's the way it is.  The DPI is heading towards approval by
the IEEE in P1800 in a month.  So this is in front of us now.
         
          I'm certainly open to have the "references" easily at hand.  I
often think it is easy to just link to a bookmark within a PDF file to jump
to where you want to go, but if a supplier wants this to be all within a
single file, I know it is possible to make this happen.  The only issue is
standard references may grow stale and not keep pace with what we do with
them.  Example, today one might reference Accellera SystemVerilog 3.1a DPI
section - or include it in a larger document; but what do you do when it
becomes an IEEE standard and has a few small changes to it.  (There are
actually issues like this to contend with, like some byte re-ordering if I'm
not mistaken between Accellera and the IEEE version for some info that would
be disastrous if we allowed two different versions to float around out there
just because one version was easy to reference or include in another
document vs. referencing the most recent version from a source that is less
flexible.
         
          One way around your issue, as I have seen in the past is, experts
in the standard will author books targeted for special and focused needs.  I
know this is a lot of writing and slows the introduction of technology.  We
have given permission in the past to authors of such texts to extract from
our work for such needs.