[no subject]

[chapman@aitg.enet.dec.com]

>Now, I really don't care whether anyone likes my writing style or
>guidelines.  It all boils down to a free market:  If you honestly think
>that chapter 4 and the section on conditions were better off before I
>worked on them, feel free to revert back.
Forgive me, but this is a silly comment. You must have been tired when
you made it. Of course anything that has been worked on and carefully
considered by a person of your background will be better than what was there.
That's not the issue!
 
>Why didn't I complain in March of 1988?
> 
>There was nothing to complain about then and there is nothing to
>complain about now, except for the influx of odd material from the
>cleanups, which is of variable quality.
Although I should be more specific at this point, I'm sure you'll agree
that a large number of your guidelines were very general and applied
to the document before the clean-ups were ever incorporated.
 
>Now, on to the point.
> 
>Not only do I not want to take over this document, but I was hoping to bow
>out at this point. I tried to make the sections I worked on as close as I
>could to what I think a specification should be, and now you (all) can do
>one of three things: make the rest of the document like them, make them
>like the rest of the document, make everything as different as you like.
This is really awful, you know. I think the gist of what I said was 
misinterpreted by you. Except for maybe one or two things, I am not
wedded to any particular style or guideline. So I'm not arguing in
favor of what the document looked like before you made corrections.
My real objection is that if you went through the part of the document
that was submitted to ISO and made it look and sound a lot different
from the way the rest of the document looks, someone will have to
resolve the differences. A year ago I would have had NO PROBLEM with
that, six months ago I would have had little problem with that. Now
I don't have time to do a proper job of it and that's the problem.
Your dropping out after creating the ambiguity, even though the
reasons might have been good and concrete and well-meaning, is
pretty awful.

kathy