gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (10/28/89)
In article <1989Oct24.174648.2503@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > I should elaborate a bit on my uneasiness about late wording changes. The > problem is that the public review process necessarily reviewed the document > *as written*, not as the committee "agreed it should be saying". Some of > the comments along the lines of "well, we finally worded const so it says > what we meant" tend to make me feel like saying "if the changes were that > significant, should they not have had public review?". I understand your concern. X3J11 has always permitted the document editors considerable latitude in devising the exact mode of expression to reflect the committee's intent. A distinction was drawn between "substantive" changes to the specification, by which was loosely meant any changes that would alter the intended interpretation of the spec, and "editorial" changes, which attempt to add clarity without changing what was intended to be meant by the spec. The response document and final draft review subgroups were constrained not to make any substantive changes to the draft Standard other than those that had previously been authorized by the full committee; however, we were also given license to use our best judgement as to how to implement the changes that HAD been authorized. Sometimes the suggested wording supplied by subgroups that had prepared the responses to public comments were clearly not in line with the intent of the full committee, and tough decisions had to be made (phone calls were made to subgroup chairmen and X3J11 officers, to verify the decisions). Sometimes, no suggested rewording was provided and we had to devise it. Other times, the suggested rewording was on the right track, but left loopholes or had other similar deficiencies. Fixing all this fell under the "editorial license" that we were specifically vested with. So far as I am aware, no truly substantive changes occurred during this process. Some that may appear to be substantive seem that way only because you've interpreted previously ambiguous or imprecise wording in an unintended manner, and consequently are surprised to see what the committee had actually meant to say (as reflected in the final draft). > (For one thing, a "top type" was not a type at all.) I was really > dismayed that it took *two* public reviews for this to sink in on X3J11. We did try to resolve this in the previous review round, but obviously were unsuccessful. To be frank, Dave Prosser (the draft Redactor) was getting extremely frustrated about this, having done the best he knew how to make it clear in previous drafts. We got him calmed down a bit and several of us worked with him for an hour or two to find better wording for this part of the spec. > The Oct 1988 wording finally fixed this, and seems to have fixed it right... I'm glad we seem to have been successful in this. > I'm a little uneasy about what happened between Oct 88 and Dec 88. It was a difficult situation. We knew that the sentiment of the committee was to send the final draft, which was unanimously deemed "good enough" (as was even the third-round draft), on to X3 as the proposed ANSI standard as soon as possible. If another public review were to be held even when no substantive changes were made, the process would never have come to closure. Guidance from our parent organizations indicated clearly that we should not have subjected the proposed standard to yet another round of public comment, and we were glad not to. We took great care to check and double-check the final set of changes, and the outcome was "It's good enough; let's ship it!" P.S. As usual, this is all my opinion, not X3J11's.