Re: SCXML: discrepancy in the standard?

Bill,

Are you sure, you do not confuse cause and effect?

If members of the working group do, what you blame me for, it is all 
right for you. Do you think, that this is constructive?

After the personal attacks from Jim Barnett and his lame excuses, I 
won't take part in the discussion any more. It is up to the community 
now, to assure that the development of the SCXML standard is based on 
technical facts, rather than company politics and personal preferences 
of the working group members as it is now. I don't spend days of my 
precious time on thinking up and writing technical proposals, just to 
find myself being blamed for fifteen additional characters, that are 
necessary in most cases anyway in the current version of the standard 
and seeing my suggestions simply wiped off with lame excuses. Reacting 
irritated, I am jumped on again - what else. Sorry, I can't remember 
ever having had any comparable experience. If this is the usual style at 
W3C working groups, I can help.

Do you really believe, that bashing the victims helps to get rid of the 
heated tone, you criticize? You should better stick to your rule ("I 
generally don't comment") or make constructive suggestions or support a 
proposal instead of listing your unrelated personal achievements, nobody 
here is interested in. Besides this, you give hints to the presumption, 
that you did not get what the role of a president in a company is. 
Having been one, is unfortunately not a proof of the opposite. As the 
financial crisis clearly reveals, there are many idiots in executive 
positions nowadays.

Please spare myself such unnecessary and irrelevant comments in future. 
Address to the working group instead, if you want things to change.

Bye


On 19.01.2012 19:41, William Meisel wrote:
> Volker,
>
> As more of an outside observer than a participant in these standards
> discussions, I generally don't comment. But your last comments come across
> as more of an unnecessary personal attack than a constructive criticism. I
> guess I'm a technical guy (was a prof of EE and CS and wrote a technical
> book on computer pattern recognition and many papers) and a past
> management guy (manager of the Computer Science Division of an aerospace
> company, founder and CEO of a speech recognition company) and am now an
> independent analyst (223 monthly issues of Speech Strategy News so far),
> and I occasionally still come up with algorithms and patents for
> consulting clients. So, in my mind, being a "manager" doesn't mean you
> cease being technical, and I've never associated management with politics.
> (If anything, a manager often doesn't have the luxury of taking a
> political stance if it means compromising getting something done.)
>
> You weaken your insightful comments by taking them beyond the technical
> level.
>
> - Bill
>
> Bill Meisel
> President, TMA Associates
> Editor, Speech Strategy News
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 1/19/12 8:53 AM, "vs@spinke.de"<vs@spinke.de>  wrote:
>
>> Dear Jim,
>>
>> editorial changes only hide the problems in the standard, but do not
>> solve them. Being an executive, you are much more interested in company
>> politics than in getting the standard right. As a linguist, you are also
>> highly qualified to judge other peoples implementations. I clearly
>> understand both.
>>
>> At first, I thought I would talk to experts in the field, but that is
>> obviously not the case, as it turns out now. Also the other members of
>> the working group are mainly managers too. Taking this into account, it
>> is no wonder any more, that saving negligible fifteen characters in the
>> scxml-file (which are necessary most of the time anyway) is a much more
>> important goal for the working group, than getting the inconsistencies
>> and self-contradictions out of the standard. Defining the language in a
>> general form with a clear, consistent and regular structure would help
>> authors as well as implementers to write concise state machines and
>> efficient implementations, but as managers this is naturally not your
>> and your peers business.
>>
>> Upon reflection of the actual situation, I was struck by the stunningly
>> obvious insight, that the working group is unwilling to make the SCXML
>> standard useful to anybody, except for its own members. All, I have to
>> do now, is to define my own language (fixing all the serious bugs in
>> scxml you leave intentionally). It is a pity, but the only way to get
>> things done. Thanks a lot, for making this consequence very clear.
>>
>> I hope that other users of SCXML are also struck by the stunningly
>> obvious insight into the self-esteem of the working group, which helps
>> them to understand the reasons for the painfully elusive definitions and
>> head-aching structure of the standard.
>>
>> Thanks to all members of the working group for the lesson.
>>
>> Yours,
>> Volker Spinke
>>
>>
>> On 16.01.2012 23:13, Jim Barnett wrote:
>>> Volker,
>>>     Upon reflection we were struck by the stunningly obvious insight that
>>> all we have to do is to switch the order of the validation and the
>>> conversion of the 'initial' attributes in the algorithm.  We've also
>>> added an explanation that the only reason for the conversion is to
>>> simplify the statement of the algorithm  (I wouldn't expect most
>>> implementations to do the conversion.)
>>>
>>> As for turning<scxml>   into a 'pure' wrapper element, we think that the
>>> current syntax makes it simpler to write concise state machines.
>>> Furthermore it seems reasonable for a wrapper element to hold an
>>> indication of the entry point.
>>>
>>> We hope to publish a new draft soon which will contain this modification
>>> (and fix a number of other bugs in the algorithm.) Thank you for your
>>> comments.
>>> Best,
>>> Jim Barnett
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 19 January 2012 22:40:08 UTC