[SCL] Re: XML syntax for CL

[Murray Altheim]

John F. Sowa wrote:
> Murray and Tanel,
> 
> The final result of any standards project
> is intended to be "egoless" in the sense
> that it becomes a "committee draft" approved
> by ISO, IEEE, W3C, or other standards body,
> but without specific mention of who did what.

Understood. Having one's name taken off of something
that took hard work to create is difficult, but I agree
that it is necessary and a good thing for standards.

> But during the development process, it is
> essential to keep track of what changes are
> being made and by whom.  The citations are
> much more than a "courtesy" credit line.
> They are essential to tell the developers
> where any particular item came from, who
> was responsible for it, what changes were
> made, and by whom.
> 
> And even a finished standard will have
> a bibliography of "normative" references,
> which are usually to other standards, but
> it may also have "informative" references
> to other publications.
> 
> We definitely want to welcome volunteers who
> are willing to do the actual hard work of
> making positive contributions to the standard.
> But whenever anybody makes an update to anything
> that was previously done, it is essential to
> point out where the original came from and
> what changes were made.
> 
> And as a common courtesy, we should give each
> other credit where credit is due, as one would
> in any kind of academic effort.  At the end,
> all the credits will be lost in some official
> statement of who was on the committee during
> the development process (but that statement
> probably will not be on the final standards
> document).

As I've pointed out previously, the original draft came after
a 24 hour stint and did not include an Acknowledgments or Reference
section at all. It now does. I've further added an acknowledgment
of Tanel's proposal. I've next to divide the references into
"normative" and "informative" subsections. (all this does take time
for one person to do in several days, despite my flurry of activity)

And again, my apologies for any oversight on my part during
publication of this proposal.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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