X3J13 Hull Pounding

[MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA]

Thank you for my selection as the Chairman of the Steering
Committee.

X3J13 has been approved.  There will be no election of Chairman
for that until the end of the year.  At the moment, I am the
Convenor of the first meetings.  In that role I can effectively
direct the initial work.  To that end I am hereby appointing what
we have called a Steering Committee as a Steering Committee to
help in guiding the work of X3J13 and I am appointing what we
have called a Technical Committee as a Technical Committee to
prepare initial items for discussion and potentially a draft of
the proposed standard.

You are no longer a self selected gang, but a legitimate
subcommittee under an approved standrards committee.

On the copyright question -- I have talked to DEC people and sent
some other information to Lucid.  ANSI has to make money on the
publication of some of its standards, so the very broad
suggestion of Scott's will probably not work.  Questions arise
with respect to commercial publication (PH, AW, Wiley, et al),
manufacturers' manuals (goldhill's distribution of the DEC book,
etc), derived manuals (possibly Lucid's), and on-line
documentation.  ANSI would probably not like the first, but would
probably go with the last three.  This is something where the
ANSI, DEC and Lucid lawyers will have to work something out with
our guidance.

On the Lucid manual as a starting point.  I always assume the
rest of you are better informed than I am, so this is just a
personal request for a copy.  It also seems likely that other
companies have their own manuals which may be very relevant in
places.  We should probably make a general request for copies of
those manuals and establish a physical library at either CMU or
ISI for reference by the drafters.

Lisp Conference in Boston -- I would suggest a SHORT time period
during the regular session to give a status report (both
X3J13/ISO and technical) and then an evening (or other out of the
normal schedule) session for those specifically interested in
details.  We should definitely take the opportunity to meet
ourselves.

Validation test suites -- we need to remind people of this again.

Standing agenda -- I plan to develop a standing agenda for the
Steering Committee that we can also use as a kind of status and
progress report.  After reviewing it with you, I will put out
another general message about how X3J13 will be organized and
work.

-- Bob Mathis