** The FB programmer's fieldguide to the bugs? **

Dear FB programmers,

     I was happy to note that list members ---
Alain Pastor <apastor@...> among others ---
have been digging programming nuggets out of the considerable 
FB list archives I maintain at at

    ftp://topo.math.u-psud.fr/pub/lcs/fb/

     I would like to propose that the FB list collectively
use these archives to set up an evolving and ultimately
comprehensive database of known bugs that bite FB
programmers.

     Let me motivate this a bit.  FB documentation is
eloquent about features, reticent about misfeatures, and
pretty much silent about bugs.  The same is true about
Inside Mac etc. etc.  And this situation is really
inherent in contemporary programming.  BUT, for every
hour a progammer spends on features, he spends 2 hours on
misfeatures, and 3 on bugs. Right?  So let us slam the
bugs by cataloging them!  Cataloged bugs won't bite nearly
as bad. Better, Statz and Andy will be able to zap them
more efficiently.

     Alain Pastor's new site
http://www.pixmix.com/FB/outils.html shows the power and
sophistication needed to set up a successful bug database.
And that is what convinced me that the bug database idea is
ripe for action.

     I don't really want to impose my own ideas on how this
should be run.  But here are some vague prejudices. Jonathan
Munn's general approach which empowers, exhorts, and teaches
list members to submit their discoveries/erudition to a bug
list editor might work very well.  Also I would guess that
keyword indexing would provide good access, and html would
offer good cross referencing. For example the Project
Manager bug that Al Staffieri has just reported and Robert
Purves then analyzed could be listed on a html bug page for
"Project Manager" with html pointers to their recent
postings of 4 Apr 1999.

                 Cheers

                    Larry Siebenmann