dshr@SUN.COM (David Rosenthal) (10/27/88)
Volume 1 of the O'Reilly books contains a re-formatted version of the draft Inter-Client Communications Conventions Manual distributed with R2. A footnote says something like "The conventions are being revised by the X Consortium. They promise that programs written to these [the R2] conventions will be compatible." O'Reilly failed to heed my warning against publishing the R2 draft conventions prematurely in this way. There is no such promise of compatibility, and they were informed of this before publication. In fact, although every effort is being made to avoid incompatibilities, I can say categorically that programs written to the R2 draft conventions will NOT be entirely compatible with the final conventions. It would be futile to insist on compatibility - in the process of reviewing a number of cases have been discovered in which the R2 draft conventions do not work. I would respectfully request O'Reilly to include an errata slip correcting their spurious claim on behalf of the X Consortium. I would also suggest that, despite the copyright notices, it is a matter of common courtesy when re-publishing material in this way to consult the author beforehand. David.
adrian@ora.UUCP (Adrian Nye ) (10/29/88)
In article <8810270352.AA01579@devnull.sun.com>, dshr@SUN.COM (David Rosenthal) writes: > O'Reilly failed to heed my warning against publishing the R2 draft > conventions prematurely in this way. There is no such promise of > compatibility, and they were informed of this before publication. The following is what really happened. I asked Dave (via email) in July whether I could print the most recent version of the conventions. He said no, and that if I had to print anything, I should print the R2 draft. We contacted Bob Scheifler to ask him whether he thought it was better to print the R2 conventions or nothing. He said that the R2 conventions would be better than nothing, because otherwise, people would invent their own conventions that would be even more different from the final ones. We went to press soon after that, around August 1. As to the statement that the final conventions would be compatible with R2, that was what the best sources thought at the time. We were definitely not informed otherwise. Anyway, the chapter where interclient communication is described clearly says that the conventions described in the appendix are only tentative and code should not be written to them. I had originally merged your conventions into that chapter but took them out again when you said they were not final. That's why they were an appendix. > I would respectfully request O'Reilly to include an errata slip > correcting their spurious claim on behalf of the X Consortium. > > David. We will report the fact that the final conventions will not be completely compatible with the R2 conventions. > I would also suggest that, despite the copyright notices, it is > a matter of common courtesy when re-publishing material in this > way to consult the author beforehand. As I explained above, you suggested we print the R2 draft or nothing. If you did not mean that, I'm sorry we used your material against your wishes. By the way, I wish you could just contact us directly about these things, so that we could resolve them more amicably. -- Adrian Nye (617) 527-4210 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks 981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164 UUCP: uunet!ora!adrian ARPA: adrian@ora.uu.net