"Andy Little" <andy@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
"David Abrahams" wrote
"Andy Little" wrote
"David Abrahams" wrote
"Paul A Bristow" writes:
What design changes would persuade you to vote for this attempt?
I haven't looked at enough of it to know if there are other issues, but in order to resolve my problems with the issues I've raised:
Clarity and conformance to Boost/C++ standards and conventions.
To be honest David, I am finding this quite difficult to handle. On the one hand I think the PQS library is good, there seems to be interest and a need. On the other hand, at least unofficially, Boost is your party
I don't know what that means. I am one of several moderators; it's
Not even sure why I mentioned moderators.
not "mine."
Put it another away. You have put a lot of work into Boost. Your vote in a review is an order of magnitude more powerful than mine (And incidentally that is as it should be.
Not sure about either of those statements. Certainly it should be clear from my review that I only had a very brief look at the library, which ought to dilute my vote considerably.
OTOH if you were in my house and wanted to knock a wall down, your vote certainly wouldnt be anything like as powerful as mine!)
Yeah, but it's not "my house;" it's ours. I may have put in a few more years in construction than some other people here, it's true.
and my impression is that for whatever reason you wouldnt be too happy about this library becoming part of boost.
No, not for "whatever reasons," for exactly the reasons I posted. It seems like you're not responding to what I wrote, but something else.
AFAIK your impressions have been formed not even by downloading the library itself but by downloading the pdf documentation,
Yes.
which I put there as some previous reviewers said they found it helpful to print it out. Once there you headed for the two areas that other reviewers found poor
Hadn't read the other reviews.
and started slashing!( Pavel Vozenilek made the same overall point but without needing to twist the knife.) That is the sum total of your review AFAICS.
It certainly wasn't my intention that my review contain any "knife twisting." On the other hand, it was intentionally pointed -- I wanted to make sure that it was well understood (failed obviously). I didn't mean my review to be hurtful; if it was, I'm sorry.
If this formed the total substance of a review of mine I would not feel justified in casting a vote at all.
Where concept documentation is concerned, IMO, a focused "no" with very specific critiques (even if it isn't weakend by being based only on a narrow view of the submission) is more valuable than a "yes" with a general request to improve the docs, especially if lots of other people are voting yes. In case it isn't obvious, I feel very strongly about the importance of the specification -- in many ways it's more important than the implementation -- and I want that to be taken seriously.
I would even be open to being convinced to change my vote, if the author exhibited sufficient interest in and responsiveness to my concerns.
The authors name is Andy BTW.
Yes, I know. I was clumsily trying to make a more general statement about what I am doing with this vote. If I had wanted it to be personal, I'd have said "you" and not "Andy."
The point re using underscores is trivial. It was done because QuickBook wont accept '-' in link names. It speeded things up slightly.
There may be a trivial reason for it, but it's not a trivial point. It has a big impact on comprehensibility.
The C++ concepts section is a mess.. Sure, as I said to Pavel Vozenilek. It was the first time I have written this kind of documentation and I found it difficult. I decided to spend time on other areas of the documentation before the review.
I understand that you decided other areas were more important, but I hope you can understand that sensible concept docs are a priority for me. BTW, if you are having trouble writing concept docs you can ask on the list for help with specific problems. I'd be happy to try to help.
I haven't looked at the code, but I really like the idea of what this library does, and it probably has a pretty nice interface -- at the code level.
Wow! That is encouraging. It would have been helpful to have that included in the review. It would have lightened the tone. As it stands I read every point made as negative.
Agreed, to soften my post I could have added my speculation about the interface being nice, but that really is just speculation. Aside from that I said essentially the same thing ("I think this is an important domain") in my original posting,
Coincidentally nor would I. The situation with PQS is that to do it justice would take more time than I am prepared to invest.
Wow. Why did you submit it?
Its a very good library, but I am too old to see the need to fight for every inch, if the environment is hostile. That is a waste of energy. I have better things to do.
The environment is not hostile; just demanding. Actually, not the environment -- it's might just be me. Boost doesn't always do what I want.
That's not funny at all, and it's not what I'd like at all. I'm not sure what gave you that impression. I thought I made it clear that "I hope we'll be able to accept a different version of this library" and also that my negative vote was made with regret.
FWIW I read that different version as implying a version of the library written by someone else. That was the impact. Re-reading it, I still get that impression. Its ambiguous and impersonal.
Sorry, it was meant to be impersonal (since it was critical -- I assumed a personal post would have been viewed as an attack -- that sure didn't work out well) but not ambiguous. You obviously invested a lot of effort; I hope we'll be able to accept _your_ library. That said, to get _my_ personal "yes" vote, I insist that certain things be cleaned up substantially. Of course you could choose to ignore me, but obviously I hope you won't, or I wouldn't have voted.
If you do decide to simply withdraw without making improvements, I'll be sorry.
OK, that is helpful, as were the encouraging comments above. OTOH I already did withdraw it in a mail to Fred Bertsch. I'm not quite sure about whether I can un-withdraw it or not. I will have to see what he says.
I'm sure we can convince him to come around. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com