Re: What could J4 (or WG4) do

Part 2 of my response:

"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:bQPcg.184184$P01.162682@pd7tw3no...

> 2. What follows from #1 above - more or less your COBOL test suite BECAUSE
> "somebody" having taken the first shot, (a developer at IBM, Unisys,
> Liant, Acu, M/F, F/J, Fujitsu-Siemens, KOBOL, Open Source etc...), you
> publicise the site to the outside world for the examples and a small
> dedicated group receives enhanced/updated examples which they
> accept/reject and if OK are further added to the list of examples.

There was some serious discussion of this a while back.  I may have the
details wrong, but as I remember it the EDS rep on J4 was in the process of
setting up just such a mechanism when his company decided to withdraw
support from the entire COBOL standardization process.

> This example thing is not a new one; I believe it was a topic at J4 about
> five years back. Trouble is you work for people who pay you but you want
> US (Certainly most PC-users, the people that have to pay ourselves), to
> initiate this idea.

My personal opinion is that the more examples the better -- but that they
should be in a separate volume, precisely so as to reduce the size of the
*reference* manual.  Examples by their very nature are "informative" rather
than "normative".

I work for people who pay me to do stuff, and a *small* part of that stuff
is COBOL standardization (a MUCH LARGER part is supporting COBOL, RPG,
ALGOL, WorkFlow and SORT compilers among other products) and managing the
processes by which they are supported.   If Unisys were willing to pay me
full time to do nothing but work on COBOL standardization, that'd be great.
But they're not, so there's not a whole lot *I personally* can do to make
sure the gruntwork gets done.   I also don't have a whole lot of personal
investment in *whether* it gets done, which is why I encourage those who
think it is MANDATORY that it be done, and SOON, to get crackin' if its that
important!   I have no reason to believe that what *you* think *Unisys*
should be paying me to do is as important to Unisys as what *Unisys* thinks
they should be paying me to do!

> Just those two points alone show how radically different our thoughts are.

I do what I can.  I won't accept responsibility for more than  that.

-Chuck ("ridin' tall on the canyon road") Stevens    8-)