Subject: MPI-CONTEXT: Reference Point

From: L J Clarke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 11:32:10 GMT

Dear Colleagues

This message is a reference point summary of the current state of
evolution of proposals.  This is intended to help reduce confusion, 
as there has been a lot of development in the last 48 hours. 

Here is a complete summary of proposals to date, with proposal
identifiers, contacts, status and brief description.  

In summary of the table:

There are currently FOUR live proposals, one of which will shortly be
circulated.  These are labelled: I (in circulation); III/IV (not
circulated); V (in circulated); VI (in circulated). 

There are currently THREE dead proposals.  These are labelled: I++
(circulated as I); II (circulated?); II' (circulated as II). 

Identifier     Status   Contact  Brief
----------     ------   -------  -----

I++            dead     lyndon   The "Proposal I" agreed at the post
                                 meet lunch, augmented by lyndon,
                                 and now defunct. This was circulated
                                 as Proposal I last week.
                                 Please kill this one.

I              live     marc     The proposal of marc which also
                                 appeared in the point-to-point
                                 document. It was cut-and-paste'd
                                 out of that document. This is currently
                                 in circulation as Proposal I.
  
II             dead     rik      The "Proposal II" agreed at the
                                 post meet lunch, now defunct.
                                 Please kill this one.

II'            dead     lyndon   A proposal unrelated to II. This
                                 has been named VI as of yesterday,
                                 to help avoid confusion. This was
                                 circulated as Proposal II' yestreday.
                                 Please kill this one.

III/IV         live     tony     The proposals III and IV agreed at
                                 the post lunch meet, to be merged.
                                 These have not yet appeared and
                                 should do within < 24 hours. This
                                 will be circulated as Proposal III/IV.

V              live     Rik      Proposal of Rik after abandonment of
                                 Proposal II. This was circulated as
                                 Proposal V in plain text and LaTeX
                                 source formats, last week.

VI             live     lyndon   This was, for about 4 hours, called
                                 II', yesterday. It has some common
                                 ground with I++ and other proposals.
                                 This was circulated as Proposal VI
                                 around 11:30pm GMT yesterday as LaTeX.

There is currently a sketch which Rik is also naming as Proposal VI. 
Please Rik, either call this Proposal VII or call it a sketch, just to
save confusion. 

The sketch suggests that we may have sufficient convergence to offer a
single proposal.  Tony and I discussed this yesterday evening and we
concur.  Tony and I suggest that the following occur:

1) Tony completes Proposal III/IV

2) Tony/Rik/Lyndon/??? discuss and hopefully agree a merger of
   VI, III/IV and V. There is no current suggestion to attempt
   to merge in I.

   I will call this Proposal X, for now.

3) if [ merger agreed in 2) ]
   then
   	Draft contains 
		Proposal I 
		Proposal X
   else
	Draft contains 
		Proposal I
		Proposal III/IV
		Proposal V
		Proposal VI
   fi

4) The false branch of 3) can be modified by a pair merger if we find 
   that two of the three extant proposals can be merged  but not all.

There is currently also one mini-proposal from Tony dealing with
layerability and tag selection.  I understand that there will be one
further mini-proposal from Tony dealing with threads. 

I sincerely apologise for having been the prime creator of confusion. 

Best Wishes
Lyndon

         /--------------------------------------------------------\
    e||) | Lyndon J Clarke    Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre | e||) 
    c||c | Tel: 031 650 5021  Email: [email-masked]  | c||c 
         \--------------------------------------------------------/

---

From: [email-masked] (James Cownie)
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 12:09:44 GMT

Lyndon, 

since I've been rather busy with other things (which are of more
immediate import to Meiko), I haven't been actively contributing to
the debate. (Though I have been skimming, and filing all of the mail).

Is it possible to pin down (or send out once again) the definitive
versions of each proposal. (A copy of the table in your previous mail
with a mail date and source for the top copy of each would do,
alternatively a clean current copy of each...)

Your last mail gives the references, but without following all of the
history it's hard to get to the top copy of each.

Thanks

-- Jim