[ANSI-Smalltalk] Writing the standard in Smalltalk [long]

[Bruce Badger]

Martin,

This is all exciting stuff.  It's great that you have taken the time
to put all this together.  I think your system is a very interesting
option.

You mentioned a few properties of your system.  Something that I think
is very important, and which should be on your list, is the ability to
see who changed what and when.  The current wiki does this by
requiring every editor to have an account and then providing a diff
tool for looking at deltas.  In your system are you leaving this to
Monticello?  If so I think we would need to understand how that could
allow a non-coder to see the source and the deltas through a browser.

I see that one of your goals is to make the output from your system as
much like the current standard document as possible.  In the sort term
I think this is indeed what we need (because we know that the current
standard text, for all it's faults, is acceptable to ANSI), but is the
current form really what we need or want  for the medium and long
term?

I had imagined that for the very first iteration of the standard we
would keep things as simple as possible and go for as many of the
"easy wins" as we could.  If we adopt of your system right now, surely
we have just placed something very significant and very new right on
the critical path - nothing can pass until your system is able to
produce something acceptable to ANSI and no work can proceed until
your system can support that work.

I have no questions about the functionality of the system you have
described in your message.  It all looks really good to me.  I do
question your urging people to use this right now.

Would it not be better to work on your system and work on getting
agreement from ANSI on a better format for the document in parallel
with getting a first iteration of the standard (with those easy wins)
out?

All the best,
    Bruce
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