Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!esf00 From: esf00@uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) Newsgroups: comp.groupware Subject: Re: Group Communication Protocols Message-ID: Date: 5 Jan 90 23:55:04 GMT References: <4318@nttmhs.ntt.JP> <90005.104713UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> Reply-To: esf00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) Organization: The Beige Building Full of Bright Engineers, Inc. Lines: 48 In article <90005.104713UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes: >In article <4318@nttmhs.ntt.JP>, yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp (Toshihiko YAMAKAMI) says: >> >> What types of high level group communication >>protocols do we use in group activities? > >Just thinking off the top of my hat 8-) > >1. Some of my communications are 'informational'.ply, > >2. Some are 'requests'. > >3. Some are 'responses to requests'. > >4. Some are 'proposals'. > >6. Some are 'arguments'. > >> Is it better to realize such protocols in communication systems? >> Ot is it hard to pick up such high level communiction primitives? > There are more ... how about 'promises' ("the check is in the mail ...") 'reminders' ("specification due ...") and probably more. Fernando Flores did some work with Terry Winograd of Stanford in the early Eighties on this taxonomy. (Does anyone have a good citation for this stuff, i.e., generally available outside university libraries and written in some variant of English?) [I did some work with Fernando in the mid-Eighties, when he maintained that a rather rigid taxonomy (only four categories) was sufficient for *all* communication. (This is the basis of the 'Coordinator', one of the first groupware packages.)] I like the idea of having the communications system understand an expandable set of primitives -- everything gets neatly packaged, and I can restrict my viewing to only 'interesting' sets of primitives. If you want to argue about who gets the desk next to the women's room, I can skip the entire thread until it gets to the 'everybody will move two offices to the left" part. -- Elliott Frank ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00 (408) 746-6384 or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00 [the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.] [the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]