- From: William Meisel <wmeisel@tmaa.com>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:41:02 -0800
- To: <vs@spinke.de>, <www-voice@w3.org>
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 Friday, 20 January 2012 17:32:00 UTC