Subject: Re: 65th IETF - WG/RG/BOF Scheduling

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:09:33 -0800

Hi, Henrik,

I've taken [email-masked] off the cc list so we don't keep generating
tickets for them while we discuss the tool design.  Or should we move
to tools-discuss?  I think this mail will get to the tool developer.

> Also, I have lists of conflicts from previous years, which I use as a
> base for the request this time.  I'd love to be able to just type
> in the list, but the tool forces me to use the drop-down list.  A bit
> awkward.

The purpose of this tool (I understand) is so that simple initial machine
processing can be done on the WG chairs' scheduling inputs, before the
human brain (the brilliant Marcia!) NP-complete effort of making the 
actual schedule.

Having seen a lot of the Chairs' unstructured requests, I know they are
very varied, even to the form of the lists for conflict avoidance:
misspellings, shorter names than the real short names, SIP/PING
instead of both names, descriptive terms.  It's understandable
but hard to use.

What I'm wondering is whether at IETF 65, the session will come
up pre-configured with the previous conflict list, and allow the chairs
to edit that...

> The tool forces me to skip that and list first-priority conflicts
> before I may list second-priority conflicts.  Is that necessary?

I agree, you should not have to do this.   Something for the fix list, IMO.

Allison

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:52:51 -0800

>human brain (the brilliant Marcia!) NP-complete effort of making the 

I think people are over-reacting.  The rendering of the "list-in-progress"
appears to be a text input box, but it is not.  I agree this is confusing.
It took me all of 10 seconds to figure out how to add multiple entries 
per line.
I think it's wonderful that this tools work is going on.  Some of us 
have been
asking for some automation in the process for years.

>instead of both names, descriptive terms.  It's understandable

I pointed this out about 4 years ago by sending my rmonmib slot request 
in XML.
It was sent back of course and I was scolded for it, but I was serious.
The goal isn't to solve the NP-complete scheduling problem, just to
solve the data input problem.

>I agree, you should not have to do this.   Something for the fix list, IMO.

Andy

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 11:00:47 +0100

> appears to be a text input box, but it is not.  I agree this is  

And has been clarified - thanks!

> It took me all of 10 seconds to figure out how to add multiple  
> entries per line.
> I think it's wonderful that this tools work is going on.  Some of  
> us have been

I think so, too - I just wasn't able to figure out how to use it.

Lars
--
Lars Eggert                                     NEC Network Laboratories