[SCL] Re: XML syntax for CL

[pat hayes]

>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.

Hold on, guys.  First, SCL is NOT an official standards effort. Maybe 
when we have done something, it will get moved into other standards 
bodies processes, but we are acting alone at present. Second, having 
something be 'egoless' is not the same as taking ones name off it. 
It means only that it has be done in the name of an entire group, 
with group approval and endorsement. Nevertheless, there is an (or 
some) editors, and their names are clearly written right under the 
title on the first page, and you can put that on your CV with pride.

>>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.

Keeping track of versions, who wrote what, etc. can get extremely 
complicated. much more than just academic polite-attribution. Using 
HTML as a documentation standard is vital to doing this properly, 
since the hyperlinks do the bulk of this kind of work. I would 
suggest that at a very minimum, we adopt the conventions whereby 
every draft of every document is given its own URL and drafts are not 
deleted (at least until we have all finished), so that we can 
cross-refer in other documents and, even more important, in emails 
which get archived. This way, one can go back through the archives 
and still follow the e-paper trails. This can be vitally important 
when issue are revisited months later. In order to keep this up, we 
should refer to documents in emails by giving URLs whenever possible. 
I can provide publicly accessible website space if anyone needs it.

>>
>>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)

Thanks, Murray, but I don't think that we need to be too fussy about 
this stuff at this stage of play. We are not in a position to declare 
anything normative, in any case: we are just a bunch of guys trying 
to get something done, we don't get to pass laws.

Pat

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