Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!microsoft!bobal From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: responses to public comments? Summary: Real Soon Now Message-ID: <8155@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 23 Oct 89 17:59:16 GMT References: Reply-To: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) Distribution: usa Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 42 In article mccalpin@masig3.ocean.fsu.edu (John D. McCalpin) writes: >Didn't someone from X3J3 say in August that they were almost ready to >send out the responses to the last public review? >The current review period is almost over, and I think it would be a >terrible mistake if the responses were not out in time.... > Yeah, well, I was wrong. The word now is that we'll get the lion's share out this week (by the 27th). However, there are quite a few letters with irregularities in the responses which will take a bit longer. It's really quite incredible that we're getting anything out at all; the letters and their responses compose a stack of paper about eight inches thick (double- sided, I believe). People have been going through the stack reviewing the responses and most of them seem okay. >On second thought, maybe the committee is doing this on purpose, so >that the reviews will get in people's hands right at the time they >need to be thinking about making the second round of public comments. > Well, the second public review was somewhat hurried to comply with WG-5 schedule constraints. We are really on the wire with this. >On a related topic: > >It seems to me that most folks out there are sick to death of the >interminable standards process, and that most non-implementors have >dropped out of following the debates. I would guess that there will >be far fewer comments on this draft from users than on the last draft >because people feel that nothing is ever going to get done. Am I >alone in this feeling? No doubt you are correct. This is traditionally true with languages standards. Third reviews, if there are any, never seem to garner more than about a dozen letters. I've always claimed that, if desired, standards committees can always just stubborn their way through public reviews, because people get tired of putting a lot of effort in and not seeing anything happen. >John D. McCalpin - mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu Bob Allison