Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a684 From: a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Off BASIS Message-ID: <2964@mindlink.UUCP> Date: 27 Aug 90 18:05:35 GMT Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada Lines: 46 JAJZ801@CALSTATE.BITNET (Jeff Sicherman,CSU Long Beach) writes: > ...This is based largely on supposition, but I can't escape the by the > opinion that the committee's intent, by and large, was to protect their own > interests and perspectives. I was there (as an observer) and I didn't get that feeling at all. It's not a group of employees paid bigbucks to get a particular implementation accepted. It's a bunch of people who have donated a lot of time and energy because they are interested in seeing FORTH become more midely accepted in the programming community. Some of them do promote the implementation choices of that they use or that their company uses. However, all they can do is present an argument, and if someone presents a better counter-argument which will lead to a standard that will be more acceptable, they change their votes. > The expense and time involved in the process itself restricts and discourages > wide participation so that it will involve largely those with both heavy > resources and investments (plus some fanatics) You don't have to go to the meetings to affect the standard. A well written proposal which presents a convincing argument is all that you need. The committee votes (fanatics aside (-: ) according to convincing arguments. Controversial proposals get discussed at great length and eventually a concensus is reached (a majority of the members have been swayed by convincing arguments) or else the proposal gets tabled or postponed until some new arguments come up. > I would have been encouraged to see solicitation from the committee for > discussion fo various topics before and/or while they were the subject of > strong debate within the process instead of dispersing decisions. The committe _does_ encourage input during discussions. Proposals are divided into categories such as "Floating Point" or "Multi-programming Word Set" and are then discussed. Any and all comments or proposals you submit will be discussed and considered. Before I get hate mail from the committee members who have to deal with all those proposals, I think they'd be grateful if you don't send in stacks of proposals that don't provide a good supporting argument, especially on well-discussed issues. The committee deals with _every_ proposal, and simple "make a separate FP stack" type proposals simply waste the committee's limited time. Perhaps one of the committee members who has been to several meetings would like to post some pointers on good proposal writing techniques. A list of "heavily discussed and more or less settled" issues might also be helpful at this stage.