jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) (12/09/89)
The X3J3 response to my first round public review comments finally arrived. It was dated 17 November, but was not mailed until 27 November (postmark). This is irritating for two reasons. First, there is a 15 day limit to reply to the committee if I think their response didn't address my comments fully - they used 10 days of that limit waiting to mail the letter! Second, the response contained the addresses for obtaining the second draft of the standard as well as the address to send second round comments - but the second public review ENDED three days BEFORE they mailed this information. Fortunately, I had ample warning of the second public review from other sources. It is clear that the committee had no strong intent to widely advertise it (although _some_ individual members of the committee did). Finally, for the most part the response did _not_ address the issues I raised in my first round commentary. For example (as I predicted) the committee incorrectly cited my first round comments as support for the new POINTER facility. Outrage would be a mild term for my opinion of this event. This is especially true since there was nothing particularly individual about the responses. The committee aparently completed and cataloged all the responses months ago. The response to me was a generic cover letter together with an automatically mapped set of responses to my comments - how long could that take?
brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (12/15/89)
In article <14164@lambda.UUCP>, jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes: > The X3J3 response to my first round public review comments > finally arrived. . . . > Finally, for the most part the response did _not_ address the > issues I raised in my first round commentary. For example (as > I predicted) the committee incorrectly cited my first round > comments as support for the new POINTER facility. There are two different issues here: the first is whether x3j3 understood and acted in good faith on suggestions sent. In jlg's case, the committe understood exactly what it was doing (his organization is represented by a very articulate member of x3j3), but simply chose to do something different. The second issue is whether the response received was an accurate reflection of how x3j3 understood the comment and acted on it. It appears that there is some problem here (personally I think it is ridiculous for the commmitte to have to give a technical response to the many hundreds of comments that were submitted), but to claim that x3j3 did not address issues raised because you don't like the action taken or the response is not reasonable (understandable, but not reasonable). -- Walt Brainerd Unicomp, Inc. brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu 2002 Quail Run Dr. NE Albuquerque, NM 87122 505/275-0800
jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) (12/15/89)
From article <587@unmvax.unm.edu>, by brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd): > [...] but to claim that x3j3 did not address issues raised > because you don't like the action taken or the response is not > reasonable (understandable, but not reasonable). I didn't make such a claim. I don't like the action taken by the committee on certain issues - that much is true. However, many of the committees responses claimed that the actions I don't like were in response to my comments. Clearly they either didn't understand my comment or they deliberately misrepresented my wishes - in either case, my comments were not correctly addressed. The POINTER issue makes my case. My comment was addressed at the lack of recursive data structures in the first draft. The committees response was: "Based on yours and many other comments, X3J3 has added a POINTER facility to the proposed Fortran language." Now, although the new POINTER facility does permit the use of recursive data structures, it is otherwise an abomination. To claim that its present form is in response to _MY_ comment is plainly untrue. It is as if I asked a car dealer for an efficient commuting vehicle and he delivered a Mack truck - and then claimed it was exactly what I asked for! Some of my comments were rejected on the basis of upward compatibility even though they didn't conflict with the Fortran 77 standard. At the same time, two of my comments pointed out Fortran 8x features which _DID_ conflict with Fortran 77 - The committee chose to retain these changes anyway as this "represents common practice". It should be noted that the features I requested that they claimed were not upward compatible _ALSO_ represent common practice! There are other examples, but these suffice to make my point. In any case, the claim that my complaints are unreasonable is itself unreasonable. Perhaps the disagreement here is over what it means to "address" the issues raised in a public comment. In my opinion, if the committee claims to have addressed the issues raised, it should have done so without misrepresentation or self contradiction. Finally, your article didn't itself address my major complaint against the committee - the lack of timeliness of the response. It wasn't even MAILED until AFTER the close of the second review period. Please note that the general tone of my first public review was positive. Although I focused on the features I thought weren't as well designed as they might have been, I generally supported the first draft standard. The second draft standard is a different matter though. I believe that in most respects where the first differs from the second, the first proposal was much superior. My commentary on the second proposal was completely negative.
brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (12/15/89)
In article <14172@lambda.UUCP>, jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes: > From article <587@unmvax.unm.edu>, by brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd): > > [...] but to claim that x3j3 did not address issues raised > > because you don't like the action taken or the response is not ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > reasonable (understandable, but not reasonable). > > I didn't make such a claim. I don't like the action taken by the > committee on certain issues - that much is true. However, many of the > committees responses claimed that the actions I don't like were in ^^^^^^^^^ > response to my comments. Clearly they either didn't understand my > comment or they deliberately misrepresented my wishes - in either case, > my comments were not correctly addressed. > That is exactly what I said: the responses were not reasonable in some cases. That still does not mean the committee did not understand what was requested when it acted on it (but, of course, that is also possible, see below). As I said before, it seems to me unreasonable for anyone to create reasonable responses to all the comments received. As to timliness, I would like to mention two facts. You may draw whatever conclusions you want from them. a) Creating the responses was one heck of a lot of work. b) The person in charge of doing them has been a strong opponent of adopting the new standard. > Please note that the general tone of my first public review was > positive. Although I focused on the features I thought weren't as well > designed as they might have been, I generally supported the first draft > standard. The second draft standard is a different matter though. > I believe that in most respects where the first differs from the second, > the first proposal was much superior. My commentary on the second > proposal was completely negative. Your first comments were probably interpreted as being unfavorable, so contributed ammunition to those who insisted on making all the changes! Many eople tend to write about stuff they want changed and not many even take the trouble to say that they like lots of it. Those of us who went through this before know that, but those opposed to the whole thing made up lots of statistics to convince lots of people that support for the whole thing was not there. We agree here that many changes were for the worse. Except for getting the description right, it was probably even better five years ago. In any case, preliminary news is that there were a lot more favorable comments on the second review than on the first, enough to form a clear majority of those responding (also, there were fewer responding). Specific numbers will vary depending on the person doing the interpretation, but I (and others, I am sure) will pass on more info as it becomes available. -- Walt Brainerd Unicomp, Inc. brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu 2002 Quail Run Dr. NE Albuquerque, NM 87122 505/275-0800
psmith@mozart.uucp (Presley Smith) (12/15/89)
In article <50500174@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >jlg@lambda.UUCP writes **The X3J3 response to my first round public review comments **finally arrived. It was dated 17 November, but was not mailed **until 27 November (postmark). This is irritating for two **reasons. First, there is a 15 day limit to reply to the **committee if I think their response didn't address my comments **fully - they used 10 days of that limit waiting to mail the **letter! Second, the response contained the addresses for **obtaining the second draft of the standard as well as the **address to send second round comments - but the second public **review ENDED three days BEFORE they mailed this information. ** **Fortunately, I had ample warning of the second public review **from other sources. It is clear that the committee had no **strong intent to widely advertise it (although _some_ individual **members of the committee did). ** **Finally, for the most part the response did _not_ address the **issues I raised in my first round commentary. For example (as **I predicted) the committee incorrectly cited my first round **comments as support for the new POINTER facility. ** **Outrage would be a mild term for my opinion of this event. **This is especially true since there was nothing particularly **individual about the responses. The committee aparently **completed and cataloged all the responses months ago. The **response to me was a generic cover letter together with an **automatically mapped set of responses to my comments - how **long could that take? * *1. As a general rule, the committe tried to generate letters postdated by * several days in order to insure that respondents would have their full * 15 days. Apparently, something went wrong in your particular case, but * this shouldn't have been the norm and most certainly was not done * intentionally. * *2. The text of the responses was approved last May. At that time, the * committee believe that all the responses would be mailed out within a * month, so it believed that an enclosure with the responses would be * sufficient. Had it realized the delays that would occur, I believe it * would have arranged for a separate mailing. X3J3 _did_ arrange for this * comment period to be 4 months rather than the customary 2 months. X3J3 * _did_ send notices of the comment period to all the publications that were * notified of the first comment period. In other words, X3J3 attempted to * advertise this comment period just as strongly as the first comment period. * With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that in some cases, these measures were not * as effective as they were the first time, but there was no reason to expect * this at the time the committee was taking action. What do you think the * committee should have been doing additionally to advertise the second * comment period? * TEXT Deleted... In fact, the letters that received around here were dated on October 23rd, postmarked on October 25th, and received on October 30th. So several people lost a week from the date of the letter to the receipt of the letter. In fact, the rules called the SD-2, are fairly clear that all letters are supposed to be sent prior to the start of the next review and that the negatives are to be addressed with the commenters before the start of the next review by response to those commentors. That is all part of milestone 14 which must be completed before the return to milestone 12 which is another public review cycle. Since several people did not get their responses from the 1st public review until the 2nd public review had closed, and since most commenters from the first public review got their responses with less than 1 month left of the 2nd public review process, I would expect that the ANSI/X3 group will get to address this issue. There is a protest and appeal mechanism to address such problems at the X3 and ANSI levels. If anyone is seriously unhappy about the way the public review process was handled and wishes to file an appeal or protest, such protests should be directed to: X3 Secretariat CBEMA 311 First Street, NW Suite 500 Washington, DC 20001-2178 Attn: Jean-Paul Emard Director On an appeal or protest, you will get a much higher level of attention that what you get with the public review letter. The management groups of the standards processes work the protests and appeals. If you have questions on this process, I'd be glad to answer e-mail on the subject at psmith@convex.com. I don't want to start a debate on the net about this subject, but everyone should be aware of your rights and options in this process.
khb@chiba.sun-bb (chiba) (12/16/89)
In article <589@unmvax.unm.edu> brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) writes:
a) Creating the responses was one heck of a lot of work.
True. The key problem, as I see it, are the rules. It is very, very
hard to get consensus on the technical issues. Asking the group as a
whole to then agree on what was done and why is generally futile. The
resulting explainations are, by their very nature, less than lucid.
b) The person in charge of doing them has been a strong opponent
of adopting the new standard.
While true, there is the ugly implication that this person acted in a
less than professional manner. IMHO said person has demonstrated a
much higher level of professionalism by taking on a hard and obviously
distasteful task, and doing it well.
The rules and procedures are at fault, not the implementor of the
"will" of X3J3.
(* I am using a new news reader/poster, so if my sig is duplicated, my
apologies. *)
Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com
It's Not My Fault | MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun*
I Voted for Bill & | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group
Opus | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"
"There is NO defense against the attack of the KILLER MICROS!"
Eugene Brooks
--
Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com
It's Not My Fault | MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun*
I Voted for Bill & | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group
Opus | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"
"There is NO defense against the attack of the KILLER MICROS!"
Eugene Brooksbrainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) (12/16/89)
In article <KHB.89Dec15100428@chiba.sun-bb>, khb@chiba.sun-bb (chiba) writes: >> >> b) The person in charge of doing them has been a strong opponent >> of adopting the new standard. >> > While true, there is the ugly implication that this person acted in a > less than professional manner. IMHO said person has demonstrated a > much higher level of professionalism by taking on a hard and obviously > distasteful task, and doing it well. > I guess I should have provided my conclusions. The job was of heroic proportions. Therefore, it is just hard for me to conceive that someone opposed to the end result would take the job at all and complete it, let alone put into it the superhuman effort needed to try to do it and meet all of the expectations of both X3J3 and the reviewers. This may be characterized as an ugly implication, but I would call it a simple fact of human nature. How much (if any) this affected the results perhaps we will never know. The only good that I hope to accomplish is to perhaps give people not on X3J3 an appreciation of the difficulty of doing all of this so they don't fuss so much about the content and timing of the responses, but instead keep on fighting for the technical changes they desire. -- Walt Brainerd Unicomp, Inc. brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu 2002 Quail Run Dr. NE Albuquerque, NM 87122 505/275-0800
jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) (12/16/89)
From article <589@unmvax.unm.edu>, by brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd): > [...] > In any case, preliminary news is that there were a lot more favorable > comments on the second review than on the first, > enough to form a clear majority of those responding > (also, there were fewer responding). [...] Most of the people I'm acquainted with who sent negative comments on the first public review didn't bother to send comments on the second. This was usually explained to me as being a waste of time since the committee appeared to ignore the bulk of the first commentary. There is some justification to this remark. For example, most of the last public review comments rejected the "specified precision" feature of the first draft. But, not only did the committee keep it all (though it was moved to intrinsic procedures), but they actually made it harder to use by interpolating some processor dependent KIND parameters into the feature. If this observation is true, then the second review comments will be fewer and more positive - not because of support of the new proposal, but because of opposition to the committee. It's too bad too. I think the present proposal (if adopted) will be the death knell for Fortran as a standard language. Many users will not ask for, nor will some vendors supply, the full language. Instead, there will be a patchwork of subsets plus local extensions to the standard (like genuine POINTERs - as opposed to the descriptors from hell in the proposed standard). This is the kind of situation which standards are supposed to avoid!