Subject: fixing misunderstanding about nomenclature

From: Tony Skjellum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 16:00:56 CST

In your last letter, Rik, you clearly identify what I have called
the PRECIS/SKETCH.  I have been talking loosely about a set of proposals
(so marked), and Lyndon has understood these all along too.  They are
called I...IV, with some sub-proposals also.  Then, for each of these,
there are certain options on what things like tags do, and so on, so
we imagine a (hopefully sparse) matrix of alternatives to be looked at
each of which is a valid closure of MPI.  Of the ones that make sense
(eg, Proposal II with tags being blah, and TIDS being blah', and the
following other side conditions defined, we have one possible closure
of MPI.  The sub-committee assigns a rank to this choice; we will hopefully
have more than one.  We vote on all of them, in rank order.  If we 
disagree violently on rank, we present all of them in a coherent order,
and vote on them in a reasonable order.)

I want to move this SKETCH to have more precise information in it.  I will
look at doing same.  Hopefully, you are doing proposal II, per Lyndon's
suggestion, and the place to find what proposal II is is still in that
SKETCH.  

- Tony

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 15:43:24 PST

> ... Of the ones that make sense

I assume that the goal is to get several proposals that are
self-consistent but different.

Since Proposal II was at one point represented as "Littlefield's
model", I will try to write my personal favorite proposal into
bullet-item form.  I don't know close it will be to your current
Proposal II, but it'll probably be different from anybody else's.

I will try to get you this by tomorrow (Thursday).

Once we have several different bullet-item proposals in hand,
what is the best way to proceed?  

My inclination is to have several rounds of critique, with the
author of each proposal responding to each criticism by one or
more of:

 . modifying or extending the proposal while retaining its character
 . modifying or extending the statement of assumptions
 . modifying or specifying an implemention strategy to overcome
   the criticism
 . acknowledging a deficiency.

Hopefully there will not be too much convergence between proposals.

--Rik Littlefield

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From: Tony Skjellum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 93 22:17:22 CST

Rik writes... (my responses prepended with four *'s - Tony)...

**** Yes.

**** Thank you.

**** Rik suggests the following strategy for handling proposal review.
**** I would like to use it...
****
Once we have several different bullet-item proposals in hand,
what is the best way to proceed?  

**** Fine, and we will use this as the criterion for all proposals.
**** It is a sound strategy.
****
**** Thanks on both counts. - Tony