Committees

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>]

This all sounds good to me, including both of the most recent lists
proposed for the two committees.

I agree with Steele that we should try not to make a "subset committee"
at this point.  Even if the members gravitate towards various areas, it
would be much better, and look much better also, to have one committee.

I agree with RPG's mail about the order of events, and it looks like
it's about time to expand to the gang of 7.  This quinquevirate list
will still be present if we want to talk among ourselves further.

I agree with Fahlman about formal semantics in the sense that real
theorists mean it.  On the other hand, the present CLtL could stand to
be a tiny bit more in the direction of formality than it is now.  I
don't mean we should start filling it with denotational semantics
(bleagh!), but notice how often someone sends mail about something, we
check the manual, and lo, it is ambiguous.  (This is not intended as
criticism of Steele!)  It's possible that having someone who is more
formally inclined would provide a nudge in the right direction.  Rees
and Bawden are both highly qualified, since in addition to their formal
backgrounds, they've been involved in real-world implementations
extensively, and know the score.  (Executive summary: I think the
current proposal looks good.)

Regarding communicating with Ida, I recently spent some time trying to
send mail to H. G. Okuno at NTT labs.  I was not successful.  Following
the paths he gave in his recent paper (the contest results), the mail
got as far as "kddlab", which returned it because it had never heard of
"nttmecl".  I'm not sure what "kddlab" is, but KDD is sort of the
Japanese equivalent of ITT; they handle international phone calls, for
example.  I'm not sure how to proceed to debug this further.

I agree with Steele strongly that when we present the committee to the
community, we re-emphasize that people will have access to information
even if they don't have a direct representative on the committee.  This
could be very important in getting everyone to accept the structure.