Hi Steve,
Thanks a lot indeed for your interest in CDR.
The rationale for CDR is explained at http://cdr.eurolisp.org/ on the opening page. You should find all answers to the question you posted on that page.
But let me stress a few points directly related to your questions:
- It is certainly possible to discuss a CDR after it has been finalized.
- More specifically, it's also certainly possible to refine a CDR after it has been finalized. However, the particular CDR (with a specific CDR number) cannot be changed anymore. If you want to refine a finalized CDR, you have to submit a new one, which will then receive a new CDR number. New CDRs can claim to updates to existing CDRs. (For example, it is already the case that CDR 4 is a refinement of CDR 0, and the whole CDR process is currently based on CDR 4 rather than CDR 0.)
- Whether a particular CDR is eventually accepted by the community or not is in the hands of the community, not in the hands of the CDR editors. CDR is only a repository for documents, not a body that can enforce or endorse standards. This was an intentional design decision, to avoid the need for CDR editors to judge the contents of CDR documents (which they don't), and to avoid legal implications.
- There are three mailing lists associated with CDR: cdr-announce is for announcements, cdr-devel is for discussions about the CDR repository and process itself, and cdr-discuss is for discussions about specific CDRs. If you would like to continue a discussion about CDR itself, please do so on cdr-devel. Didier (the author of CDR 11) seems to be willing to discuss CDR 11 on cdr-discuss, so if you are interested in that, please discuss it there. (Authors are encouraged, but not required to discuss documents. Again, CDR is intentionally a light-weight process: Any requirements imposed on authors would need to be checked, and CDR is designed to require as few checks as possible. That's why documents don't even need to be discussed, because it would be hard to judge what would qualify as a "sufficient" amount of discussion. We believe that members of the community are mature enough to decide for themselves what constitutes a "good" CDR or not.)
Again, thanks a lot for your interest. I hope this clarifies your questions. Please feel free to comment or discuss this further, if you think there is room for improvement.
Best,
Pascal
P.S.: I personally believe that Duane Rettig's proposal for environment access would be an excellent candidate for a CDR. Franz Inc. probably has more extensions that would be good contributions. Please let us know if we can help with submitting CDR documents, in case you are interested.
On 8 Jun 2012, at 06:49, Steve Haflich wrote:
> Pascal et al.
>
> I'm confused, or perhaps only ignorant, about the process underlying the
> CDR repository. Once a CDR becomes final after a very short time, there
> seems to be no forum or machinery to discuss or refine it. While I find
> myself sympathetic to at least some of the stated problems, none of the
> stated solutions are fully acceptable -- there are glitches in the
> specifications, or important situations missed, or incompatibilities
> between proposed changes and the official sanctity of the CL package.
>
> Is there some forum for further discussion of "final" CDRs? Otherwise
> the CDRs seem a rather profitless exercise.
>
> _______________________________________________
> cdr-announce mailing list
> cdr-announce(a)common-lisp.net
> http://lists.common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cdr-announce
--
Pascal Costanza
The views expressed in this email are my own, and not those of my employer.
