Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!ccnysci!phri!cmcl2!lanl!lambda!jlg
From: jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: FIRST public review - response finally
Message-ID: <14164@lambda.UUCP>
Date: 8 Dec 89 21:03:42 GMT
Lines: 28

The X3J3 response to my first round public review comments
finally arrived.  It was dated 17 November, but was not mailed
until 27 November (postmark).  This is irritating for two
reasons.  First, there is a 15 day limit to reply to the
committee if I think their response didn't address my comments
fully - they used 10 days of that limit waiting to mail the
letter!  Second, the response contained the addresses for
obtaining the second draft of the standard as well as the
address to send second round comments - but the second public
review ENDED three days BEFORE they mailed this information.

Fortunately, I had ample warning of the second public review
from other sources.  It is clear that the committee had no
strong intent to widely advertise it (although _some_ individual
members of the committee did).

Finally, for the most part the response did _not_ address the
issues I raised in my first round commentary.  For example (as
I predicted) the committee incorrectly cited my first round
comments as support for the new POINTER facility.

Outrage would be a mild term for my opinion of this event.
This is especially true since there was nothing particularly
individual about the responses.  The committee aparently
completed and cataloged all the responses months ago.  The
response to me was a generic cover letter together with an
automatically mapped set of responses to my comments - how
long could that take?