Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!resq!Uucp
From: Uucp@resq.fidonet.org (Uucp)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif
Subject: Re: synthetic resources
Message-ID: <38.27EF9882@resq.fidonet.org>
Date: 26 Mar 91 13:18:26 GMT
Organization: RES-Q, Paterson NJ  (201) 881-7421
Lines: 41

From  uunet!osf.org!motif-talk-request
From: uunet!hpcvlx.cv.hp.com!ben (Benjamin Ellsworth)
To:   motif-talk@osf.org
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 13:40:51 pst

> Isn't this the sort of thing that contractors typically are expected
> to provide?

Often documentation of internal mechanisms is not part of contracted
work.  There are many cases where it makes no sense to place and pay
for that expectation.

It depends on the contractor, the customer, and their product and their
relationship.  In general, for a rapidly changing and growing product,
it rarely makes sense to invest in detailed interal documentation which
is going to be 80% obsolete within a year (it is usually about as
expensive to properly document such things as it is to build them). 
This is especially true when there is a good deal of permanence between
the contractor and customer.

When the feature set of Motif stabilizes, I expect that such internal
documentation will be required.  Until then, it only makes sense to
document the guts of motif that you don't think will change, and very
few of the internal mechanisms passed that filter for 1.1.

There is no guarantee that the synthetic resource mechanism won't
change in subtle ways for 1.2.  Internal stuff is that way.


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