Hi, Craig,

Your points are well taken. Clearly, we need(ed) to do a better
communication job, since many of your suggestions already are happening.

The public email list (x3j20 at qks.com) is open, but I don't think there's an
archive for it. This would indeed be good for someone to take on, although
volume has been low (chicken/egg?).

We did not have a huge Web effort, but the Smalltalk Industry Council
(www.stic.org) provided space on their site that's relatively up to date.
I'm not sure why it isn't adequately referenced via web search engines.

As far as electronic copies go, we requested it all along. The reproduction
fees do help keep ANSI and NCIT in business, so the earlier drafts were not
available electronically. However, NCIT policy did allow us to provide the
Public Review draft electronically, which we announced on Dec 20 (Allen W-B
sent email to the squeak list, and posted to comp.lang.smalltalk). It's
available from the STIC web site. In hindsight, given the holidays and the
low response, we probably should have sent out a reminder to the community
early in the year.

The intent of the committee was to be open. Maybe by the time we're done,
it will feel open as well.

Thanks for the feedback,
glenn


At 01:10 PM 4/17/98 -0700, Craig Latta wrote:
>
>Hi Glenn--
>
>	I must admit that I was far more interested in ratification of "good
enough" than "the right thing". I was confident that the people working on
the standard would produce a good starting point (and I think they have).
Until recently $300/year and even one interstate trip *would* have been too
much for my budget (both money and time). And my employer had no interest
in Smalltalk standardization. So... I didn't actively participate.
>
>	I'm not complaining either, since I do think the current draft (I broke
down and ordered one) would make a good initial standard. And I must also
admit that I tend strongly toward the experimental; where I work there is
no ANSI Smalltalk checkbox. :)  But it's relatively important for purposes
of mindshare (corporate and otherwise), so I'm glad ANSI approval is so
close. I do have some suggestions:
>
>	Make all drafts and public digital correspondence (e.g., the ANSI
Smalltalk mailing list) freely available online. I'm probably not
up-to-date on these policies, but as far as I know such access is not
provided. ANSI was charging $35 for *paper* copies of the drafts, and there
was no mailing list archive available. I tried to look for anything related
to the Smalltalk standardization process at www.ansi.org just now, and
found nothing. Searching for "Smalltalk" in both the main search area and
the standards documents search area yielded no matches. Searching for
likely information sources with Alta Vista mostly yields hits in the Squeak
mailing list archive. :)  Hopefully there's another website I should be
looking at.
>
>	I think this is the main barrier to community happiness with any
resulting Smalltalk standard. Despite the strong efforts of the ANSI
Smalltalk committee members, the process still feels closed. The arguments
put forth by ANSI in http://web.ansi.org/public/catalog/why_chrg.html are
not convincing in the face of the resulting community apathy.
>
>	Anyway, thanks. I think this process has accomplished some important
things and has much potential.
>
>
>-C
>
>
>--
>Craig Latta
>composer and computer scientist
>craig.latta at netjam.org
>www.netjam.org
>latta at interval.com
>Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
>
>
>