[abc] /me talks to himself on irc

I spewed out some comments about the paper on irc. I kept going for
quite a while before I realized that I was talking to just myself and
Julian. I'm sending out a copy so all of you can listen to me talk to
myself.

16:22 < hendren> I'm thinking now ...
16:27 < olhotak> Hmm... I see that it's not easy to organize this paper.
16:36 < olhotak> OK, I'm done reading the paper.
16:37 < olhotak> It strikes me as somewhat backwards (maybe reading it from the end would have helped). I see the difficulty as a tension between the example
                 extensions themselves, and the extensibility of abc in general.
16:38 < olhotak> Explaining the examples first really puts the focus on them, and makes the whole paper feel like the examples are the only contribution.
16:38 < olhotak> However, we need to say something about the examples first, because we use them to illustrate how extensions are done, throughout section 4.
16:39 < olhotak> But, if we just say something brief about them, then we haven't really done the examples justice.
16:41 < olhotak> I mean, it *is* significant that the examples are actually real, useful things.
16:42 < olhotak> And it doesn't make sense to just say something brief about them at the beginning, then describe them a second time yet again.
16:42 < olhotak> I think a big weakness is that section 4 is written heavily in terms of the examples, rather than in general terms.
16:43 < olhotak> If it explained what can be extended, why it should be extended, and how it is extended in general terms (within each subsection), followed by
                 a small demonstration of how specifically it's done for the examples, that would help a bit.
16:43 < olhotak> I'm not sure if it would help enough, though.
16:44 < olhotak> Am I just talking to myself here?
16:48 -!- cgoard [cgoard@string.CS.McGill.CA] has joined #abc
16:48 < julian_> olhotak : nope, we're listening
16:49 < julian_> well... I am
16:49 < olhotak> Well, Laurie and Heffie are gone.
16:49 < julian_> oh
16:49 < olhotak> I think I'll put my musings into an e-mail for everyone.
16:50 < olhotak> julian_: I think it's important to show the extensions in detail in the paper, because they're significant and it's important to show that
                 they're significant.
16:51 < olhotak> But on the other hand, we need to convince people that it's more general than *just* those extensions.
16:51 < olhotak> I'm not quite sure how to do both at the same time.
16:51 < olhotak> Hopefully the others will have an idea.
16:51 < julian_> I know what you mean. There is a lot of implementation detail. Wood hiding the trees kinda stuff

Ondrej
Received on Wed Sep 22 21:53:33 2004