From malcolm@num-alg-grp.co.uk Fri Oct 22 15:09:49 1993 Received: from ben.Britain.EU.net by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA09206 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Fri, 22 Oct 1993 15:09:49 +0100 Received: from num-alg-grp.co.uk by ben.britain.eu.net via JANET with NIFTP (PP) id ; Fri, 22 Oct 1993 15:07:04 +0100 Received: from mars.nag.co.uk by nags2.nag.co.uk (4.1/UK-2.1) id AA22979; Fri, 22 Oct 93 15:01:23 BST From: Malcolm Cohen Message-Id: <21442.199310221406@mars.nag.co.uk> Received: by mars.nag.co.uk (5.65c/UK-2.1) id AA21442; Fri, 22 Oct 1993 15:06:38 +0100 Subject: Progressive vs. Conservative To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Date: Fri, 22 Oct 93 15:06:30 MET X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 > I propose that we have a thorough discussion on > this fundamental issue and thus obtain one of the guiding principles of our > work. Mr. Shen seems to have forgotten that we have spent a great deal of our time discussing management and strategic plans for the development of Fortran. Perhaps he is unhappy with the outcome of the last three WG5 meetings and wants to revisit all these old issues again. > Otherwise much effort and time, e.g. at WG5 meetings, would be spent > in inefficient (wasteful) ways. We have already had these debates and most of us seem to think that we must steer a careful middle course between stability and change. Hardly surprising. > If the majority favours a conservative > standpoint, the we could (it is not too late) vote out again those new > features that were voted in at Berchtesgaden. Ah, so you *are* unhappy about the decisions we have made. As for "majority rules", remaking WG5 into the Fortran Political Party would not be an improvement. We should all be familiar enough with consensus decisions by now. > If the majority favours a > progressive viewpoint, then we should consider how we could increase the > speed and effectivity of the processing of the standard. Er, we always want to improve the speed and effectiveness of our procedures, being progressive has nothing to do with it. Indeed, over the next couple of years we are going to find out whether our new way of working *has* increased the speed etc. -- ...........................Malcolm Cohen, NAG Ltd., Oxford, U.K. (malcolm@nag.co.uk)