Werner has his name on as many IPC standards as anyone. That said, when I worked in IPC's standards department we as a rule did not go back and massage or edit text (unless we saw a blatant typo, such as a misspelling) once the Interim Final was voted on. Am I'm not so sure I'd want it any other way. The task groups spend an extraordinary amount of time wordsmithing these documents, and they sometimes break the rules of proper grammar. But the IPC tech staff are not technical editors either, and less familiar with the technology and methods about which the standards are being written. The potential for creating errors * however inadvertent * is troubling. I'm not going to explain the standards development process here, but I'm sure someone from IPC will do so (nudge nudge). Suffice it to say, no one should be rewriting documents at the Interim Final (last) stage. That's intended to be a up/down vote. Mike Buetow Editor in Chief Circuits Assembly 30 Glenburnie Road Boston, MA 02131 USA W/mobile: 617-327-4702 PCB Design East, pcbeast.com Sept. 25-29, in RTP, North Carolina >>> [log in to unmask] 8/31/2006 9:23 AM >>> Hi Brian & Inge and others, Brian is absolutely correct in his criticism of the editorial quality of this balloted draft. Please note, it is a draft, not the final document. During the balloting process, many of these shortcomings are recommended for change on the 'IPC Consensus Vote & Comment Form' which has a column titled 'Type of Recommendation: Editorial (E)'*editorial change recommendations are almost routinely accepted by the committee during the next meeting [in this case at IPCWorks]. During the construction of IPC documents, the contributions of many diverse contributors are in many cases simply incorporated; the emphasis being on the technical content and being as inclusive as possible. This leads often to repetitions, disconnects, and almost always to a hotchpotch of different styles, particularly as to language and grammar. It would be nice if IPC had the manpower to go over these documents prior to balloting; however, these documents typically undergo significant changes, particularly during the initial balloting process, and the editorial effort would be wasted. Many people that have not been involved in the committee comment and make recommendations and the documents typically improve significantly by the time they are ready for final editorial efforts by the IPC staff just prior to typesetting. So, the initial ballot is not the time to nit-pick [no criticism intended here], but to make your comments in the proper avenue for it so that the committee can act on them. Werner --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------