IEEE insane?

Posted by Nico Golde in random blurb
Sunday, January 29. 2006

"IEEE - The world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology".

"IEEE Standards
The IEEE is a leading developer of standards that underpin many of today’s technologies. Our standards are developed in a unique environment that builds consensus in an open process based on input from all interested parties. With nearly 1,300 standards either completed or under development, we are a central source of standardization in both traditional and emerging fields, particularly telecommunications, information technology and power generation."

I took this information from their website. So far so good. Today I needed some information from the IEEE floating point standard p754r for university research.

Then I saw that they publish their "standards" as .doc files (also known as Micro$oft word documents).
Are they sick? They are developing standards and they publish them as word files? Oh dear this world is fucking crazy.

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Those are just emails as the path says. I can easily display them in my browser (ignoring the surrounding litter). You're not missing anything.

#1 Anonymous on 2006-02-02 21:02 (Reply)

???

#2 nion (Homepage) on 2006-02-03 14:55 (Reply)

Those .doc files do not contain any specifications. If you look at the URLs, you can see those are archived emails. This is in the first file:

Here's a raw dump:
Working Group Meeting 16 May 2001 Agenda 1. Introductions 2. Approval of the Minutes 3. Approval of the Agenda 7. Discuss/move forward with Dan Zuras's proposal on higher precision - Zuras 8. Review NaNs and FMA exceptions 13. Inclusions of Transcendental Functions * What is required 14. Other action items? 15. Project Schedule 16. Meeting Schedule (current version) June 20, 2001 @ Network Appliance 1 to 5 PM Craftsman Conf Room July 18, 2001 @ Network Appliance 1 to 5 PM Craftsman Conf Room August TBD September TBD October TBD November TBD December TBD January 14, 2002 @ Network Appliance 1 to 5 PM Craftsman Conf Room 17. Task assignment 19. Other business 20. Adjourn

#3 Anonymous on 2006-02-26 15:47 (Reply)

I havent looked at the content but imho doesnt matter, they publish information in a not standardized form

#4 nion (Homepage) on 2006-02-26 16:12 (Reply)

Maybe it's not published but just a leaked mailbox?

#5 Anonymous on 2006-02-26 17:29 (Reply)

? its on their website so its published

#6 nion (Homepage) on 2006-02-26 17:34 (Reply)

Sorry, but I don't really see a point in complaining that someone there uses .doc files as long as everything of worth is published in an open format. You wanted to read a standards document and none of these files is one. I see it this way: these files are public available but none of your business. Besides, OpenOffice would probably open them just fine. Really, don't be just a hypocrite. If these were the standard documents, I'd wholeheartly agree but they aren't.

'they publish their "standards" as .doc'

This is simply not true. They are published as PDFs. To be honest, I find PDFs just as annoying. Sometimes Ghostscript or xpdf just want open them. For most specs. graphics are not necessary or crucial, I prefer plain text any time.

#7 Anonymous on 2006-02-27 11:26 (Reply)

Oh ok, seems that you are right. Thanks, for pointing me multiple times

#8 nion (Homepage) on 2006-02-27 14:23 (Reply)

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