I fail to see why discussion of new additions/changes to the standard can abound for an extended period of time, and ultimately be beaten into astalemate.
I don't quite know what the 'Standard Version Naming Scheme' for abc is, but I thought the use of a #.# allowed small changes from say, 1.6 to say,1.7... or if that's too big of a psychological jump, perhaps to 1.6.1 or somesuch. It reminds me of the American Legislative branch, which tries to pass new legislation that encompases VAST amounts of change. It ultimately fails,and all the time spent on the legislation is wasted. If the same legislation is broken up into smaller bits, progress can be achieved. Some parts of theprevious whole, of course fail, or are 'sacrificed'. Often those bits are not the most important bits anyways. I'm sure everyone will disagree as to 'priority' of each issue brought up for inclusion in an updated standard, but there seems to be a fair number ofsmall issues that the majority of people regard as 'non-issues' or 'no brainers' or. Gee.. This makes tons of sense.. Noone's offered any reasons whythis is bad... But since it's wraped up with a bunch of other controversial issues.... Stalemate.. nothing gets done. Can the existing (if it's not defunct) committe choose to implement a sliding change to the standard to progress us from 1.6.0 to 1.7 ? I readily admit that my perceptions may be incorrect. But if they are not, is there any interest in addressing this issue? //Christian > Atte wrote: > | On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, John Chambers wrote: > | > Atte wrote: > | > | >> !fine! exclamation-point abuse > | > > | > This reminds me: There has been a bit of discussion of this > syntax | > off and on over the years. Some people have > implemented it. Could | > people post information on which abc > apps accept this syntax? > | > | abcm2ps > > That's the only reply that I've seen. Is this the only abc > program that understands the !foo! annotation syntax? (Well, > actually, my jcabc2ps clone does, too, so that's two abc2ps clones. > Not what you'd call an overwhelmingly positive response.) > > If so, I'm disappointed. I sorta recall that there was quite > a discussion of this on several occasions, and a lot of people > seemed to think it was a Good Idea. Some recent messages implied > that some people thought the issue had been settled and this > syntax adopted. But the shortage of replies to my question imply > that this isn't true at all. > > Of course, it did also get mixed up with the concept of macros, > since a lot of people prefer 1-char abbreviations for such > things. And macros turn out to be so complex that most > people give up in bewilderment after reading a few messages > on the subject. I don't think I'd want to try to implement any of > the things I read; I'm certain I'd do it wrong. > > But the !foo! notation itself seems simple. And a header line > that says something like m:q=!foo! seems like it would be > trivial to implement. I wonder if it would be possible to get > general agreement on something simple like this, and leave > parameterized macros for a future discussion. > > (Of course, if past history is any clue, what will happen is that > a few people will declare that macros that just do string > substitution are not nearly powerful enough to solve all the > world's problems, and another discussion of obscure macro > implementations will follow, with the result that everyone else > will killfile the topic and the idea of a basic substitution macros > will once again die on the vine. ;-) > > To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: > http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html -- +===================================================================+ Christian Marcus Cepel ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ [EMAIL PROTECTED] icq:12384980 `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) 5812 Square Circle, Columbia 65203 (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' w573.882.8309 h443.8676 m268.7533 _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' Computer Support Specialist, Sr. (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, College of Ed, University of Missouri - Columbia * And the wrens have returned & are nesting *In the hollow of that oak where his heart once had been *And he lifts his arms in a blessing *For being born again. --Rich Mullins +===================================================================+ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
