Response to Ron Whitney

Ron Whitney writes:
> undogmatic.  I view their contributions as wholly positive.  I'm
> certain that Nico was *not* asserting otherwise, but I would
Ron is right: I was not trying to assert otherwise, but I was 
asking a question (perhaps not neutrally enough :-), because
I am only vaguely familiar with Mathematica. I asked the question
because I wanted to know how feasible the mechanisms are that Bruce
describes. If Mathematica already implements something similar, this
is an argument in support of feasibility. It also might give an
indication of how easy or difficult it is to come up with a real
implementation.

I agree with Ron that there is some politics involved as well. I
think this group should make it absolutely clear that we will
draw inspiration from ISO 12083 as much as we need, and that we
will use the ISO TR 9573 entity sets, and also that WRI is not
"running the show".

As an aside: at the SGML Europe'96 conference Roy Pike attended the
meeting of the committee responsible for ISO 12083, chaired by Eric
van Herwijnen, and we got him to consent to the idea that there will
always be users who need/insist on a P(resentation) (geometric, visual)
notation. I said "he consented", but I should have said 
"he consented grudgingly and certainly not wholeheartedly". :-)

Nico

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Dr. Nico A.F.M. Poppelier
Elsevier Science, APD, ITD               Email: n.poppelier@elsevier.nl.
Molenwerf 1, 1014 AG Amsterdam           Phone: +31-20-4853482.   
The Netherlands                          Fax:   +31-20-4853706.   
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                  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
                                             And maybe some compromises.