Looking for feedback

Because of the very nature of EAGLES, which aims at developing consensual and broadly agreed common specifications, a large number of groups active in Europe in the different areas of concern were involved in building on the results of the major European projects to develop preliminary specifications or to establish common ground more precisely. Many of these groups were or are engaged in testing and validating our preliminary proposals or in elaborating further background material intended to provide a basis for additional proposals in a second phase of EAGLES.

From the outset, in EAGLES, there has been a commitment to obtaining feedback (within the time constraints of the project) from the wider community on all proposals agreed on by the group. For this reason, preliminary proposals of the various EAGLES Working Groups were made public at the end of 1994.

In addition to the main objective of disseminating and making available the EAGLES results for wide consultation and application, we remain committed to the purpose of soliciting feedback, comments, suggestions and criticism (negative and positive) on a body of material which represents work that is:

• In some cases still preliminary or in progress;
• In different states of development;
• Not always coherent or harmonised;
• Not complete with respect to known problematic areas.

The reader is therefore requested to take particular note of the nature of this body of material and to make due allowance. We certainly do not claim that all the material reaches what is normally thought to be an acceptable level for general publication. Certain material, for example, has been only lightly edited or revised, in our concern to place it before the community in timely fashion for feedback. We are thus very much aware of inconsistencies, repetitions, lack of cross-references, differences in style and presentation, etc. The reader should accord low priority to commenting on such matters.

We are also aware that sometimes different views of some issue are put forward by different working groups (or indeed by different members of one subgroup). We see this as a normal part of the search for consensus. If the reader is able to contribute in part to helping resolve controversial issues, or can provide telling reasons to opt for one proposed preference rather than some other, this would be most welcome.

The reader is thus invited to offer feedback on content-related issues as a first priority. We are keen to hear the reader's views on:

• The feasibility and applicability of our current (sometimes preliminary) proposals;
• The relevance of proposals to your own area of interest and to the needs and interests of your organisation;
• Whether, in your view, an adequate level of consensus has been reached already on some issue, as a result of our proposals;
• What further work needs to be addressed to arrive at a consensus, if our proposals are deemed inadequate or incomplete;
• Whether there is any undue bias and, if so, suggestions as to how this might be corrected;
• Whether any major or widely-used approaches, theories, projects, resources, etc., that have not been taken into account so far, should be, only if you deem these to be critical to any harmonisation effort (we have not been exhaustive in our descriptions or assessments of projects, etc., where these latter merely added weight to our deliberations rather than any aspect crucial to overall harmonisation -- moreover, we do not have the capacity or mission to effect exhaustive surveys);
• Whether you prefer some proposed approach to another (there are cases where, at least within EAGLES, there appears to be no strong preference for adopting one proposal rather than another);
• Any relevant standardisation or harmonisation activities that should be taken into account but have not been;
• Possible terminological infelicities or conceptual misconceptions;
• What issues you would like to see addressed by some future EU standardisation effort.