X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["9868" "Mon" "8" "February" "93" "21:42:52" "CET" "Frank Mittelbach" "MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE" nil "195" "The purpose of the volunteer tasks" "^Date:" nil nil "2"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/1.9.92 ) id AA26070; Mon, 8 Feb 93 21:42:25 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/19.6.92) id AA02342; Mon, 8 Feb 93 21:42:19 +0100 Message-Id: <9302082042.AA02342@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0624; Mon, 08 Feb 93 21:43:13 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 6623; Mon, 08 Feb 93 21:43:09 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 6621; Mon, 08 Feb 93 21:43:05 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 21:42:52 CET From: Frank Mittelbach Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: The purpose of the volunteer tasks Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 959 Let me, in response to Paul's say something how I see the volunteer tasks (from the ltx3 project point of view), why I find them important and what I think they should provide. The main idea behind the tasks was to single out individual aspects of specialized problems, or problems outside the experience of the core team, that can be tackled without having to deal with implementation issues which are under development by the ltx3 project, or which would provide important input to the ltx3 project (eg syntax proposals). One aspect of the whole scheme was (and is) to free some man-time in the core team that would otherwise be spend in such tasks and would delay the whole project. It was also meant to give people the possibility to contribute to the ltx3 effort even if they intend only to devote a very limited amount of time to the project. Now, my experience with volunteers (before the task list was done) was not very good (with exceptions of course, like the swell job that was done by, Johannes Braams and Dave Love to update doc and docstrip, and and ...) But too often the result was negative in the sense that I spend a day writing long email messages, getting material together and sending it to somebody who said he was interested in doing something and then nothing happened. The answer when asking after a suitable interval of silence usually was, `oh, it turned out that I had other things to do'. Very understandable (who hasn't :-) but also frustrating. Therefore we tried to do this volunteer task in a more formal manner by publishing the tasks, maintaining the list (which is done by George very well in my eyes, thanks) and also by providing guidelines how the tasks should be handled. One of the most important things in this world is information management. We therefore asked (and still ask) the individual task coordinators to enlarge the task description (eg goals, purpose) so that it can be send to further volunteers. We also asked to collect and `make available' information about the task. This, by the way, is probably the most important part of some of the tasks. This means that after collecting and sorting the information (eg producing some latex article) one can make it available in electronic and paper form. What we haven't said, because I thought that was clear, is that part of the work on a task such tasks should be to present intermediate and final results in a suitable electronic processable way (perhaps even as latex documents?), so that they can be made available to the public and can be discussed further. This even applies to a task like rewriting Makeindex where I think first there should be a proposal on what is intended and and and. The discussions and different opinions on this list about that particular subject show that even such (on the first look) straight forward tasks should follow this rule. I'm currently evaluating how to make LaTeX3 project papers available, this means storage and retrieval handling as well as organisational stuff, etc. Such task results should be part of this available documentation. Could every one who has already volunteered to work on a task, or those who think of doing so, think about this? Please. There is one volunteer group (Validation of latex209) which is already doing a splendid job; maybe others have done good work too, but so far ``it's only in the program, but nobody knows about it''. It would be fine if this would change. By the way Daniel Flipo flipo@citil.citilille.fr would be very much interested if somebody would join his group (Validation of latex209). There cannot be enough people for this important job. Now to Paul's individual comments. > I agreed in October to be "co-ordinator" for commutative diagrams > (in category theory (pure mathematics) and theoretical computer science) > and expected to receive some comments on this subject from other who are > interested (Kris Rose, for example), but got nothing. I think that's life and we all experience this too often. But again, rather than relying on email (just a fast letter now and a long answer later) it really helps if you take the time and provide such thoughts and comments in article form. This does not mean that it has to be polished but it helps not to get forgotten. It also helps because people usually think first about it before they reply (this is just another fact of life, making hard copies seems to help). > The "task list" says that what I am supposed to do should take "2-3 days". > Now the programming I have done has taken two orders of magnitude more time > than that, so I'm a bit puzzled as to what job does take that long. Well, sorry for any dates in the task list, perhaps you have to apply Don Kuth' rule which says: `change to the next unit (ie week) and then put into the second power', so in this case this would be between one and three months. However, the task you agreed to co-ordinate was a research task on suitable syntax proposals and not about writing code! In other words we asked for thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of the syntax in different packages already available, evalutating this and writing this plus the conclusion up in a paper. Which then could be thrown in a general debate and/or used directly as a basis by the latex project for implementation. I may have been wrong about 2-3 days. But I'm pretty sure that taking this amount of time (full man-days, which may mean a few weeks, when one is only spending some hours on it) it should be possible to get something which would be at least a first step and which definitely would help in bringing the ltx3 project forward. > I'm also a bit worried by the language of the rest of George's message, > which sounds like that that is used by middle managers in large organisations > to their juniors :-). I haven't seen his message but from what you have quoted above it was basically repeating parts of the published vol-task stuff which of course may sound strange. In any case, since I asked him to send this message, I would like to excuse me for any bad feelings it may have caused. However, I hope that the motives for asking the volunteers to do what they have volunteered to, are clear. And I think it is very important that they do what they are asked for and not only what they think is most interesting in the area For exactly this reason we asked the co-ordinators for writing an enlarged taks description. What I mean is that the volunteer task list was published to help the ltx3 project. Of course, they may have good arguments and we may be completly wrong but this would come out once we (the project) would get informed of the intentions of the volunteers. To take Paul's task as an example, since he wrote this letter: we were not asking for providing a macro package we were asking for syntax proposals, for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of the syntax used by different packages, and (perhaps) for a proposal which would provide a syntax better than everything available so far. > The code I have written is not LaTeX-specific, but I am happy to co-operate > with the LaTeX-3 project. I suspect that this is the position of other > task co-ordinators, at least in "applications" areas. So this wasn't really the question. The situation as it is now is that I would need to look at Paul's package and at all the others and thus do the task myself. However this is exactly what I hope to be able toavoid once we get the result from this particular task plus any discussions following its publication. I don't doubt that Paul's work is important to the TeX community, don't get me wrong here, but it wasn't the task we were asking to give us a hand. > Maybe, George, you > could give us more guidance on how to proceed in co-ordinating the efforts > of those who already have their own separate up-and-running applications > macros, as is the case for Kris Rose and myself, for example. I hope I have freed George to answer this :-) Please note that none (one execption?) of the tasks asks for implementation. And, in any case, if this wasn't clear I hope it is now. > Now turning to my "task" in particular, I have in mind to write to those, > including Kris, who have worked in this area. Maybe there are other readers > of this list who have something to contribute, and I would like to hear > (by private email) from them. I haven't drafted the letter yet. Okay fine, but please then provide what we are looking for. > There was a correspondence on the category theory list some months ago > in which some people got very upset when I rejected suggestions which > were unspecified (in the technical sense), of minority interest and far > from what I could implement, and I don't want to get into that again. that could be very well of interest to the ltx3 project, ie sumarizing such proposals and suggestions and saying why you rejected them. Negatives are half of the job! A few general last remarks: My impression is that once there is a volunteer (co-ordinator), people feel that there is no need sign up for a task even if they have interest. This is WRONG, please check with the coordinator there is most certainly something to do and I hope by now it is clear what :-) Second, please understand that we ask for something specific and that we hope that this, after you you agreed on doing it, will be done, the project depends on your help. If you think you should do something else to help us, discuss it with us, you may be right and we wrong. But don't just sign for a task and then do nothing or something different without informing us. Finally, I would like to thank all of you that have helped us so far. This very much includes George; maintaining this volunteer stuff is definitely not easy and I think he is doing a really good job. Frank Mittelbach LaTeX3 project