RE: Issue 250 resolution

> -----Original Message-----
> From: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com [mailto:noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com] 
> Sent: 05 September 2002 01:54
> To: Martin Gudgin
> Cc: EUSNILM@am1.ericsson.se; Henrik Frystyk Nielsen; 
> marc.hadley@sun.com; moreau@crf.canon.fr; www-archive@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Issue 250 resolution
> 
> 
> Gudge writes:
> 
> >> In general I don't consider the text in issue
> >> resolutions to be prescriptive. We long ago 
> >> decided that editors had the latitude to
> >> incorporate as they saw fit.
> 
> Hmm.  I must say that as WG member that's real news to me.

It shouldn't be. It was agreed either at a telcon or a face-to-face
quite a while ago ( over a year I think ).

> I guess I've 
> always taken resolutions at face value:  some mandate details 
> including 
> text, and some don't.   I expect the WG says what it means.

But the exact text 'defined' by the WG during the resolution is often
done in isolation, without much regard for other spec text either in the
vicinity of the change or elsewhere.
  
> Certainly in 
> schemas, if the resolution specifically said explicitly 
> "change text A to 
> text B" then we schema editors interpreted that as either it will be 
> pretty much exactly B, or else we will warn the workgroup 
> that we've taken 
> some liberties and await a reading that it's within our 
> discretion.   

We decided not to work that way.

> If 
> the resolution said something less precise, then we assumed 
> it was indeed 
> as you suggest the editors' job to come up with wording, and that the 
> resulting wording did not need explicit approval of the workgroup. 
> 
> Obviously, it's a bit late to discover this difference of 
> interpretation, 
> so I suppose there's not much to do but focus on the specifics of 
> individual issues.  If there are any others in the post FTF 
> batch  where 
> the WG specifically suggested text, and you happen to 
> remember that we did 
> not use something quite close, I think it might be worthwhile 
> to at least 
> verify among ourselves that we've truly acted in the spirit 
> of the WG. 

I don't remember changing any text. To be honest I don't remember
deciding to change 250 either, but obviously I did. It may be given my
mail that the reason I was asking for feedback from the other editors
was because I was unhappy with the wording, but I really don't remember.

> Again, I understand it's late, and to the extent this is 
> impractical or a 
> burden I'm prepared to skip it and move on   ( and I realize 
> that even 
> suggesting this is making the quite questionable presumption that my 
> interpretation of the WG's intent is in some sense correct.)
> 
> Perhaps we should at least quietly alert David to the policy 
> we've taken, 
> to make sure that he understands.  Are you sure he's aware?  

I am sure he is aware. The discussion centred around the fact that it
was difficult to make text read well, and diffucult to avoid repetition,
if we had to 'replace sentence x with text y' all the time. The WG voted
that the editors had discretion to modify resolution text as they saw
fit.

> I'm a little 
> concerned that we have sent resolutions to third parties saying 
> essentially "the text will now read X, are you happy with 
> this?", and then 
> they'll find that the text does not in fact read X.  I 
> suppose that's a 
> bit how I felt on 250.

I understand that that is a problem. You will notice that only one of
the resolutions I sent to xmlp-comments was worded in such a way.

> 
> So, regarding 250:  yes, thanks for your understanding, I'll make the 
> change (probably this evening). 

OK

> 
> Again, thank you for your patience with this concern, which 
> I'm sure comes 
> across at best as a picky nuissance.  Please take no offense 
> or concern at 
> any confusion this misunderstanding might seem to cause.   

I'm difficult to offend ;-)

> We're all doing 
> our best, and you (and some others) have certainly borne a 
> major load on 
> behalf of the WG, especially the last few weeks.
> 
> Thanks.  I hope you understand my concern in this area.

No problem.

Gudge

Received on Thursday, 5 September 2002 04:32:07 UTC