In a message dated 98-04-08 01:47:22 EDT, you write:

> True, not all tradesmen are comfortable with, or motivated to provide,
>  documentation that is recognizably descended from the methodology
>  established by the more academically inclined professions. But if the
>  purpose of documentation is to provide a continuum of knowledge of the
>  history of a structure, then, to be truly useful, limitations have to be
>  placed on how idiosyncratic the format can be before it passes out of the
>  realm of useful knowledge.

I agree with Bruce fully on the above. It may be my bullheaded approach to the
task that is causing confusion. My intent was to go to the extreme of
documentation that a craftsperson would be comfortable with, and to work from
there towards a structured format, rather than starting from an apriori
structured format and trying to fit it to the craftsperson. I think Bruce and
I are aligned on the intended result.

I also must say that it is very difficult to figure out what comments will
elicit dialogue on the I-way. It seems simple words like "leaftime" and "test"
generate a wealth of response. Throwing out larger concepts seems to require
that we wrangle over them a bit before we realize we are talking about the
same elephant. We all have faced the time when we left a note on the I-way and
got no response. I'm motivated to always respond as much as possible. Back to
Lyotard.

][<en