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Donn,
Many thanks for you comment and for formally bringing this
to the attention of the committee. I agree with you on the sentiment of the
action, appreciate its importance and note that this is covered in the project
plan as being addressed in draft 3.
I've sent this to the general discussion list so we can get further
input. At the moment we do not have any specific changes to action.
I'd like all involved to consider the matter so that coming out
of Montreal we can have specific editorial actions identified. I will
contact IEEE to see if they can assign staff in Montreal willing to
attend a style clinic.
Some items for consideration:
The style that we are starting with has also proven
acceptable with ISO. The end style also has to be acceptable to the IEEE
and The Open Group. My thoughts are that the evolved style will be
somewhere in between - input is coming from the IEEE staff editors
(also note that using tools like SGML its also possible for the same document
text to have multiple styles).
The plan dated 6th June, http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_23r1.html,
includes the following at the moment:
Draft 1 review June 1 - July 15 ...
Assumes working group review the document.The Open Group and
IEEE editors to liaise over style changes.
Draft 3 February 2000 ...
Document Style finalised.
regards
Andrew
On Jun 15, 10:06am in "Bug in XBD", Donn Terry wrote:
>
> @ Page xiii Line 450 Section Preface o []
>
> Problem:
> This objection really applies across the board to many others, and
> falls into the "for the record" category, at the moment.
>
> I have NOT seen any details of any discussions between the formal
> standards bodies and the Austin Group, so some of this may have
> been addressed. However, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that
> based on past experience, the formal standards buracracy is not to
> be taken lightly. The original 1003.1 would have looked a great
> deal different had it not been for the insistence on the application
> of formal rules and a need for consistency of style with other
> standards.
>
> It took months of negotiation to get line numbers approved by the
> ITTF, and then one (important) national body voted negative on each
> and every POSIX ballot because of line numbers (and some other
> style things), no matter whether they were informed that the issue
> had been resolved. This negative ballot came not from the technical
> experts, but from that national body's buracracy.
>
> It would be naive to think that the current style has much of a
> chance of being approved without significant modification, and if
> the issues have not been resolved, there's little chance that this
> effort will result in an approved IEEE, National, or International
> standard.
>
> In some sense, this has to be considered the single most important
> objection: if the document cannot be approved as formal standard,
> then why bother at all?
>
> Please don't get me wrong: In general I find the current document
> an improvement (particularly in organization, although the author
> of the present POSIX organization might not agree). Most of the
> things that are likely to stand in the way of approval are NOT
> related to that, but at a finer level of detail:
>
> 1) Requirements for stilted language, particularly the use of "shall".
> (This exists for two reasons: the obvious English usage of the
> imperative form, in the case of shall, but also a number of
> issues w.r.t. assuring that translations are accurate and
> unambiguous. I'm not enough of an expert, but can the subtleties
> of can/may/shall/should be accureately rendered into all of
> French, Russian and Japanese, the three additional ISO languages
> besides English?)
>
> 2) Requirements of form to match the ISO "house style".
>
> The IEEE was gracious enough to yield to most of the requirements
> of ISO style, while still going to bat for us on a few really
> important issues such as line numbers. However, my informal
> impression of the situation up and down the standards buracracy
> was "here's a bunch of whipper-snappers (again!) who think they
> know better than we do what makes a good standard". Going through
> that again would be tedious and probably introduce at least a year
> delay (as it did last time), so we need to start NOW on working
> through the style issues, and making the required style corrections
> in early drafts, so it's right in the later ones.
>
> Again, let me empahsize that there are good reasons behind some of
> the ISO rules (and nonsense behind others). We should be sure that
> we DO keep the good reasons, and fight only those battles which
> are truly important, because we'll win only a few, and those few we
> choose to fight will themselves provide a significant delay in the work,
> particularly if they are serialized with the technical work.
>
> Action:
> 1) Arrive at an acceptable (to ISO) style for the document
> IN TIME FOR DRAFT 2.
>
> 2) Convert the document to that style.
>-- End of excerpt from Donn Terry
-----
Andrew Josey The Open Group
Austin Group Chair Apex Plaza,Forbury Road,
Email: yyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Reading,Berks.RG1 1AX,England
Tel: +44 118 9508311 ext 2250 Fax: +44 118 9500110
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