I've written up a set of "meta-rules" for annotations, that is,
rules for how annotations should be defined to work. These rules
collect together information that is in some of our specs while
also providing some of the design principles we had in mind when
we first started using annotations.
Of course, there's also a bunch of exceptions and special cases
that I've tried to document.
http://java.net/projects/javaee-spec/pages/AnnotationRules
Your feedback is encouraged, either privately or on the list.
Feel free to forward this message to other experts and expert groups.
Thanks.
Bill