Subject: Re: [rfc-i] [Rsoc] New proposal/New SOW comment period

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 13:43:38 +0200

On 31.08.2019 19:43, Jim Schaad wrote:
> So the piece of mail from Russ makes for an interesting starting point for
> discussion of what you believe this new person should be doing.

Excellent point.

> He has asked for a new feature, change bars, to be added to the v3
> vocabulary and provided an example of when this has been done in the past.
> This means that the person in charge needs to look at this feature request
> and decide what to do with it.  Except for a decision to punt, this is a
> decision that has long term effects on the RFC series.  Should this be
> allowed?  If allowed how is it presented for the different document formats?
> What is the mechanism that this is done in the vocabulary?  Does this mean
> that we should have the full set of change bar features or not?  The current
> document just has bars down the side, but does not have any insert or delete
> markers.

One could also question whether it's a good idea to have "diff"
documents like these in the first place. IMHO it's totally a disservice
to the reader.

> Is this the type of decision that this new Temp RFC Series Manager supposed
> to be making?

Hard to say until we have a concrete timeline about when v3 is properly
defined (not only implemented), and when we plan to have a v4.

Evolution-wise, I'd except v4 to be mostly extensions, plus removal of
things deprecated in v3.

With respect to the concrete example: to find out whether v3 is
sufficient, it would be good to get the production center to look at:

- things they did in NROFF because xml2rfc's output was deemed not good
enough (well, except for line break and page break control), and

- things where the authors or the production center used <artwork> for
stuff that actually is not artwork.

Best regards, Julian
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From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2019 08:27:15 -0700

Hi Jim, Julian,
>>discussion of what you believe this new person should be doing.

Yes.

>defined (not only implemented), and when we plan to have a v4.

There are some decisions which may have a long term impact.  Either 
there is a decision on who is going to make those future decisions or 
the discussion can happen if/when the future decisions have to be 
made.  In my opinion, the second option is not a good alternative.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

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From: Sarah Banks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2019 20:48:13 -0700

Speaking for myself, I'd say that anything that can wait should wait. Do we NEED to have change bars RIGHT NOW in order for documents to flow? I think the temp position shouldn't be forming policy unless we think it has to be done now. That starts with a discussion in the RSOC; I'd expect either the temp person to bring it to us (as Heather often does today) or for the RSOC to bring it to the temp person. 

If we agree on this rough idea, should we add it to the SOW to be clear, or simply have that discussion during the interview process, etc?

Thanks
Sarah

> On Aug 31, 2019, at 10:43 AM, Jim Schaad <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Jim
> Rsoc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.iab.org/mailman/listinfo/rsoc

---

From: Jim Schaad <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2019 21:47:44 -0700

-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Banks <[email-masked]> 
Sent: Tuesday, September 3, 2019 8:48 PM
To: Jim Schaad <[email-masked]>
Cc: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>; [email-masked];
[email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Rsoc] [rfc-i] New proposal/New SOW comment period

Speaking for myself, I'd say that anything that can wait should wait. Do we
NEED to have change bars RIGHT NOW in order for documents to flow? I think
the temp position shouldn't be forming policy unless we think it has to be
done now. That starts with a discussion in the RSOC; I'd expect either the
temp person to bring it to us (as Heather often does today) or for the RSOC
to bring it to the temp person. 

If we agree on this rough idea, should we add it to the SOW to be clear, or
simply have that discussion during the interview process, etc?

[JLS] I have a feeling that this type of guidance is going to be vital in
terms of somebody trying to translate the SOW into an actual set of job
goals.  Given that you are restricting the job from what the full RSE job
has been in the past, a knowledge in advance of what those types of
restrictions are makes a lot of sense.  I will note that I am unsure that
the RSOC has the requisite knowledge of how publishing looks like to be able
to provide more than an opinion on this type of discussion.  This is the
type of decision that we hire an RSE for.  I worry that other decisions
might have long lasting effects that we don't want and cannot anticipate
because we do not have that type of expertise.
Jim

Thanks
Sarah

> So the piece of mail from Russ makes for an interesting starting point 
> for discussion of what you believe this new person should be doing.
> 
> This means that the person in charge needs to look at this feature 
> request and decide what to do with it.  Except for a decision to punt, 
> this is a decision that has long term effects on the RFC series.  
> Should this be allowed?  If allowed how is it presented for the different
document formats?
> What is the mechanism that this is done in the vocabulary?  Does this 
> mean that we should have the full set of change bar features or not?  
> The current document just has bars down the side, but does not have 
> any insert or delete markers.
> 
> Is this the type of decision that this new Temp RFC Series Manager 
> supposed to be making?
> 
> Jim
> 
>