Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!sdcrdcf!otto!convex!authorplaceholder From: psmith@convex.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: FORTRAN 8x Public Comment Summary Message-ID: <68000014@convex> Date: 14 Apr 88 15:23:00 GMT References: <68000012@convex> Lines: 96 Nf-ID: #R:convex:68000012:convex:68000014:000:4216 Nf-From: convex.UUCP!psmith Apr 14 10:23:00 1988 Since this debate is going on the net, I will add my 2 cents worth. In article <50500042@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >A few preliminary comments on the summary of the Fortran 8x public comment: >1. How did you get this info so fast? I'm a member of X3J3, and I've only > received about 3/4 of them. I do in fact receive my input from the X3 organization. As Bob Allison states, they tend to get the information before the X3J3 organization does. >2. How many of those negative letters were form letters? In the letters > received before the last X3J3 meeting (about 90), more than half of the > negative comments (about 35) were form letters. I'm afraid that ANSI rules don't distinguish between "form" letters and any other letter. Each comment received must be treated as an individual comment. IBM certainly only has one vote on X3J3 just as a person on the committee who represents only himself and his interests has one vote. In a similar way, a letter from a group with many signatures only counts as ONE comment. Each comment is given a transmittal number by the X3 Secretariat and the committee must write exactly one response to each transmittal. Just as IBM gets one vote, each letter, no matter how many signers, must get equal treatment as one comment by the committee. There are no procedures in the ANSI process for petitions, letters, etc. signed by many people. Several groups held seminars on the subject. Boeing, CONVEX, CERN, etc. In our seminar, we point out positive aspects of the proposed standard and the negative aspects. We also summarize the comments from IBM and others. At the end, we encourage people to write to the committee but we didn't control their comments. We did in fact provide a summary of things that we believed to be positive and things that we believed to be negative. Some of the "form" letters you see is a result of people using those lists to write their individual letter. Each individual wrote their own letter. (I was disappointed that more individuals who said they would write didn't!) Over two thousand letters were received from the COBOL 8x public review in 1981. There was in fact a FORM letter and many of the responses were exactly this form letter. May people just copied the form letter on the copier and typed in their name and company name...they didn't even bother to retype it on their own letterhead or remove the top line which was "MODEL..." shown below. Here's what that letter said: MODEL LETTER FOR GENERAL OBJECTIONS Chairman X3J4 etc. "We are opposed to the subject dpANS, primarily because it is not upward compatible with x3.23-1974 COBOL. Programs that have been written in the current American National Standard should not have to be rewritten simply to comply with a new COBOL Standard. We reserve the right to comment at a later date on other techinical matters regarding dpANS x3.23-198X COBOL" Very truly yours _________________________ Now, that's a form letter... The English wasn't even good in it... The committee had to answer all of them anyway... >3. Some of the letters characterized as negative are from people I know to be > generally in favor of 8x (although they have specific concerns about the > current draft). In my original note, I stated that I would take corrections. I have just issued corrections received from one person. Please have the individual that wrote the comment send me the correction. I don't want it second hand because then someone else's opinion gets added and might be wrong just as my opinion might be wrong. Again, I WILL RE-PUBLISH ANY LEGITIMATE CORRECTIONS... >4. What did CBEMA do with my 42 page comment? I wonder how many others are > unaccounted for? > Officially, the committee does NOT have to look at any comment that came in after the cutoff date. Bob is right, that could be a real mess. After the cutoff, letters can be considered as any other letter that comes directly to the committee. But, the committee is certainly not bound in that case to follow the public review comment reply rules... I'm sure this will be debated...