Giles wrote:
> I notice that those within throw their share of produce.
Indeed, but they also show up at meetings and do the work.
> I haven't done
> anything in this thread to deserve your tone.
Maybe you should re-read the rest of **THIS** paragraph!
> You have not addressed the
> basic issue I talked about: where's the daylight in the process.
The daylight in the process is that the J3 web address has been
published numerous times. Here it is again
http://www.j3-fortran.org
> What
> *specifically* are the two relatively major features you mentioned
> before?
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE look at the J3 web!!! All of the details of
the proposed features are there!!!
> Why do you *not* want to discuss them in more public forums?
I simply do not have time to re-write each proposal paper in a mail
message whenever somebody is too lazy to look up the details at the
J3 web site.
> You
> can whine all you want about external criticism, but it's justified as
> long as the committee conntinues to present new feartures as fait-acompli
> and claiming it's too late for any changes.
New features are not presented as fait-accompli. The public **WAS**
engaged in proposing new features. There **WAS** e-mail discussion of
new features during the last year. The public are ***ALWAYS*** invited
to attend J3 meetings. The web address has been published numerous
times. Here it is again
http://www.j3-fortran.org
J3 are eager to engage users in the discussion. BUT... the real work,
the intense work, the final work gets done at the meetings. For reasons
recently explained it just hasn't been possible to do much more by e-mail
than is done now -- much as I also wish it could have been.
> *NOW* is the time to present
> *PUBLICALLY* what the committee is doing. You may even get more recruits
> to attend.
J3 **IS** working publicly, and always has. The web address has been
published numerous times. Here it is again
http://www.j3-fortran.org
The public are ***ALWAYS*** invited to attend J3 meetings.
The papers proposing new features have been at the J3 web. J3 started
collecting new features before meeting 167. The process for collecting
new feature requests was publicized, and Giles submitted several. Papers
about the proposals have appeared at each of the 2004 meetings, and there
are a few remaining to be considered at the February 2005 meeting.
> And, I notice you still are secretive about the features and proposals
> currently under consideration. Users can and will vote with their feet.
> Fortran is over complex as it is. Additional features should be considered
> *very* carefully or users *will* leave the language. It's already hard
> to defend Fortran on its traditional merits of simplicity and efficiency.
There is not now and has never been anything secretive about J3 work.
Anybody can attend a J3 meeting. The only restriction is that you can't
participate in "official" votes until you've paid your ANSI dues and
attended one meeting as an observer. Those are ANSI rules, not J3
rules. The only way that a proposal gets onto the final list of things
that the US delegation will propose to WG5 is for it to be **VOTED ONTO
THE LIST**. You **CANNOT VOTE** if you don't join and participate.
The web address has been published numerous times. Here it is again
http://www.j3-fortran.org
In the archive for every meeting there is a file paper###.txt, which is
the list of papers for meeting ###. The titles of the papers are pretty
clear. In the archive for each year there are several. In the archive
for 04, there are four papers lists, including paper170.txt, from the
most recent meeting. In that file, one who looks will find paper
04-423r1 as the latest version of "J3 F03+ New Features," which is an
Excel spread sheet listing the status of every proposal that has survived
so far, including the index numbers of the papers that describe them. I
don't run Windows, but OpenOffice is able to open 04-423r1. The only
excuse for not knowing what J3 is doing is not having looked at what J3
is doing. If the minutes and the papers don't provide enough detail,
consider coming to the meetings.
--
Van Snyder | What fraction of Americans believe
[log in to unmask] | Wrestling is real and NASA is fake?
Any alleged opinions are my own and have not been approved or disapproved
by JPL, CalTech, NASA, Sean O'Keefe, George Bush, the Pope, or anybody else.
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