Re: 2167A, 498, commercial and mil standards...

[s0222353@moncol.monmouth.edu (DEAN RUNZEL)]

: Doc Elliott (helliott@losat.redstone.army.mil) wrote:
: : Based on recent postings here in cla, there is a lot of uncertainty in 
: : the area of Military, DoD, etc standards and their application.  I 
: : suspect that there are also a lot of unanaswered questions on both sides 
: : of the fence regarding various applicable commercial standards.  Is there 
: : a newsgroup which addresses this?  Should there be?  Is there a need out 
: : there for an information source where you could ask questions like "What 
: : standards are there which apply to RF message formats?" as well as 
: : questions like "In paragraph X.Y.Z of MIL-STD-498, what is the general 
: : interpretation of the term 'procedure'?"  Wouldn't it be useful to have a 
: : readily available FAQ or WWW host that listed sources (electronic and 
: : otherwise) for all sorts of standards, specs, and the email addresses of 
: : the greybeards involved in their development?

Dear all,
  What it boils down to is FUNDING, FUNDING, FUNDING. Most gov't. agencies 
just can't afford to do this. I posted the spawar info and included a point
of contact. If you need other formats, call and ask about them. WordPerfect 
has been used by the gov't. for several years for docs and they probably
won't change soon. Most modern word processors can import from WordPerfect
format. Maybe we can get something into wuarchive. How about this -- 

  1. Establish a directory at wuarchive called mil_stds and created a 
     separate subdirectory for each standard. For example, 
     /mil_stds/498 or /mil_stds/2167A.

  2. Gov't. would post an original in either ASCII or WordPerfect format.

  3. Users could download the original, convert to another format, and
     be kind enough to upload the converted doc. The filename would be the
     format of this particular copy. For example,
          /mil_stds/498/original.ASC
          /mil_stds/498/original.WP51
          /mil_stds/498/postscript
          /mil_stds/498/Word50MAC

Note that the filename original is reserved for the intial upload. Also, users
would be asked to do the conversions and upload them. How do we start this?


Also, the AJPO has been involved in MIL-STD-498 development. They may have
other formats available.

I guess the meat of this post is : stop whining and waiting for the gov't.
to spoon feed us. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your gov't. can
do for you, but what you can do to help your gov't. and others.

Thanks,
  Dean R. Runzel