X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1274" "Thu" "10" "December" "1998" "19:42:28" "-0500" "Y&Y, Inc." "support@YANDY.COM" nil "28" "Re: Public vote!" "^Date:" nil nil "12" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA31976; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 01:43:58 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <9.2E6C5F47@listserv.gmd.de>; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 1:43:57 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 412386 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 01:43:37 +0100 Received: from mail-out-0.tiac.net (mail-out-0.tiac.net [199.0.65.247]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA11785 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 01:42:51 +0100 (MET) Received: from mail-out-3.tiac.net (mail-out-3.tiac.net [199.0.65.15]) by mail-out-0.tiac.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA10510 for ; Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:42:42 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from support@YandY.com) Received: from DENALI (p30.tc9.metro.MA.tiac.com [209.61.77.31]) by mail-out-3.tiac.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id TAA10219; Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:42:41 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from support@YandY.com) X-Sender: yandy@pop.tiac.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-ID: <4.1.19981210193536.00a37330@pop.tiac.net> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: <009D0821.9CF1AC80.130@ROSE.IPM.AC.IR> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:42:28 -0500 From: "Y&Y, Inc." Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: Public vote! Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3067 At 03:29 PM 98/12/10 , Roozbeh Pournader wrote: >I think preparation of some question forms for distribution between LaTeX >users will have a great outcome. We can know which parts are used more, >and which parts less. This is somehow like taking a vote. So we can know >which package they use and love, which packages the use and hate, >which package they haven't heard of, which feature they like to see >in the future, etc. etc. I think the problem with this laudable objective is that there is no way to take a scientific sample of (La)TeX users. Only a microscopic fraction of them belongs to any one well defined group --- like people reading comp.text.tex --- or TUG, or DANTE or GUTenberg or NTG or CyrTUG --- or reading Notices of the AMS or SIAM say. And if you perform the survey in comp.text.tex you will get an extremely biased view of the world! One outrageous idea would be an access count on packages on CTAN. Although this would not take into account redistribution at local sites and would be swamped probably by `mirroring' access and `collectors/pack rats' (who must simply have everything of any kind whether they need or not) rather than `normal' end users. Regards, Berthold. Y&Y, Inc. http://www.YandY.com/news.htm mailto:support@YandY.com