From: <mackay@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <8806150618.AA01295@E40-368-1>
To: rap@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, bgardner@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, rap@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: mackay@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Comments before I send this out?  W
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 88 02:18:08 EDT


| d | i | g | i | t | a | l |           I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O


To: Geoff Bock				Date:  15 June 1988
    Bob Fleischer			From:  Wendy E. Mackay
    Brian Gardner			Dept:  BOSE
    Rich Pito				DTN:   253-0171
    Jeff Siegal				Email: GOLDKY::MACKAY


Subject:  14 June Athena Lens Meeting


Attendees:  Geoff Bock, Bob Fleischer, Brian Gardner, Wendy Mackay
            Rich Pito, Jeff Siegal

Overview:

Jeff, Brian, and Rich are currently each working on a short project to
allow them to become familiar with programming in the X environment
and to begin thinking about Lens issues.  Jeff is working on a message
type editor, Brian is working on an interactive "widget builder", and
Rich is working on a rule editor.  These projects are designed to be 
small, but address real issues.  They should be finished by the 
beginning of next week.

Administrivia:

Geoff, Bob and Wendy all agreed to look into the issue of time card
processing.  Wendy will order 6 copies of the X documentation and see
what other documentation is appropriate.  Geoff and Bob will bring
phone books next time they come down (!).

Wendy handed out a list of the advisors to the project, who will 
be invited to the Design Review meetings.

Time Line:

After outlining the number of weeks in the project, we came up with
the following (tentative) schedule.  A more detailed schedule will be
included in the functional specification.


Week of:	Activity:

 6 June:	Project Start, 1st week of intro project

13 June:	2nd week of intro project

20 June:	C course.  Draft Functional Spec (27 June).

27 June:	X course.  Design review (30 June).

 5 July:	

11 July:	Design Review

18 July:	

25 July:	Design Review

 1 August:	

 8 August:	Design Review

15 August:	User testing begins

22 August:	

29 August:	

 2 Sept:	End of project


Project issues:

Wendy outlined the current thinking on message types, concentrating 
on the issues that need to be addressed including:

	- managment of incomplete or different message types,
	- formality dimension (organizationally controlled types vs.
		types created by small groups),
	- role of fields in determining message types.

Geoff brought up the issue of how organizations determine which 
message types are relevant and useful.  

Brian outlined a scheme for handling message types that don't 
fit into the receiver's predefined message type hierarchy.  (Messages 
are graded according to how well they match known message types.)

The group also addressed some of the issues surrounding creation 
of rules, including:

	- format of the rule editor,
	- how rules are saved and how user edits are handled,
	- how rules are compiled.

Several suggestions about how to allow more complex rule formation
with the rule editor were raised and will be explored in depth at a
later meeting.