(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4015) [ukfortran] Paper 09-238

[Malcolm Cohen]

Hi Aleks,

Aleksandar Donev wrote:
> BTW, my actual message suggested not to delete WG5, rather, to do all 
> technical discussions on J3 and keep WG5 for the rare WG5 business.
WG5 business is not always rare, and not always non-technical.
>
>> There has been quite a bit of technical discussion when it concerns
>> people outside J3.
> Either all technical discussion concerns those people, or none does.
Not so.
> Can you explain to me what the difference between "WG5" and "J3" 
> technical issues are? You are asking me to guess. As far as I can 
> tell, the qualifier seems to be: The originator was not on J3 and thus 
> sent it to WG5. This is not a clear direction.
I don't see any difficulty in
    replying to WG5 messages on the WG5 list,
and
    replying to J3 messages on the J3 list.
What is unclear about that?  They are two separate committees, so even 
though there is substantial overlap, two separate lists.

On the few occasions when a J3-initiated discussion starts to involve an 
international dimension then one can reply to the WG5 list to bring in 
those extra people.  I don't see any great difficulty there either.
>
>> Come on.  The system has been running pretty satisfactorily for 18  
>> years.
> For your definition of "satisfactorily". I have heard at least 3 
> people complain just this past week!
And none of them are complaining about the WG5 list, rather it is the J3 
list.
>
>> in gear but are you really saying it is beyond the wit, or patience, of
>> the current set of Fortran standards people to look at the original 
> If we want to go in that direction: Is it really beyond the technical 
> abilities of the Fortran standards people
Please feel free to volunteer your services.
> to set up lists so that they function like most
Many, many, lists do not set Reply-To.  I am even subscribed to some of 
them.
> lists and do not require manual intervention? At *least* one of the 
> standard e-mail client "Reply" or "Reply-all" should work,
Sure, Reply-all always works.  So why not use it?  The lack of using it 
is what led to my original complaint.
> without the recipient having to do manual work.
Point-and-click is just so tiring, I don't know how I ever manage to 
send anything.  Seriously though, I don't see what the big difficulty is 
in clicking on Reply-All: I have to choose between the two all the time; 
not all multi-recipient email arrives via a list with "Reply-To:" set to 
the list.

Should I have just demanded that when the J3 list server forwards 
WG5-originating messages that it sets Reply-To to the WG5 list instead 
of the J3 list?  That is certainly the solution I'd prefer (and I 
believe a number of others would prefer), but I did not expect that the 
J3 list maintainer would want to spend time digging around in the list 
software configuration to work out how to do that.  That's why I made my 
more limited suggestion, viz a "j3-no-reply-munging" list alias.

Cheers,
-- 
.........................Malcolm Cohen, Nihon NAG, Tokyo.