1. When each SPAR Request for Comment document is released, you will be notified by e-mail to spar-all@isi.edu.

2. You are asked to review it, especially taking into account your panel remit or specialism and to submit your reviews by e-mail to spar-core@isi.edu.

   In order to provide some structure to the reviews, and to allow the work you do to potentially have an impact on future revisions of SPAR, please use the following guidelines for reporting the results of your review:

   • You should note that all SPAR reviews and communications will be made public, so please bear that in mind when making your responses. By making a response you are agreeing that the response text and any attached digrams may be used without constraint in a non-exclusive way by incorporation into future revisions of the SPAR document and publications relating to SPAR.

   • To handle the communications more effectively, the SPAR Core group request that you responses be in the form of "issues". The issues can be reported on a proforma that is available electronically in text and HTML formats. All issues will be converted to this format for handling within the SPAR review process in any case, so if you can help by doing this in advance it will greatly ease the burden on the Core group.
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   • All reviews should be returned electronically by e-mail. It would also help if each issue you raise is in a separate message (with the text or HTML version attached or included) with the issue topic name in the subject header. Use text in the third person so it can be entered straight into the web pages.

   • It is unlikely that detailed technical discussions can take place specifically involving the SPAR Core Group during the development of SPAR. Any such discussions should more properly be passed to one of the many technical groups and pre-standards activities which are considering similar matters in great detail. In some cases the SPAR Core Group themselves will pass on the issues raised by reviewers to such special interest groups for their consideration and further comment on options.

3. You may also raise an issue within your own panel using the SPAR e-mail aliases provided for the purpose. Do not include spar-core@isi.edu in the exchange of discussions related to your panel's review. Only the final result should be sent to the core group.

4. Please do not raise issues with too wide an e-mail audience. arpi-all@isx.com, for example, is much too broad a mailing list to raise SPAR issues.

Increment to SPAR Document

1. Increments that are compatible with the current document that are not the subject of immediate (1 day) issues raised by other core group members will be incorporated into the document after the elapse of 1 day from receipt.
2. Core group members may subsequently raise informal issues on the increment at any time and they can be handled in two ways:
   • resolved informally by the increment proposer withdrawing or modifying the increment in line with the informal issues raised,
   • otherwise by being handled as normal by establishing the informal issue as a formal issue.

Issue Handling

1. Each core group members may hold their own issue information on-line at their own site as described in the distributed issue handling process.
2. Each core group member must watch for and take full responsibility for gathering the notes for the issues they are responsible for handling.
3. A core group member can pass the handling of an issue to another core group member with their agreement, but otherwise retains responsibility.
4. Any core group member can ask for notes to be added to an existing issue or raise a new issue at any time.
5. When the person responsible for an issue judges that the issue is ready for resolution, and in any case before the identified "to be resolve by" version is finalized, the person responsible will:
   • ensure that the issue summary and any detailed issue page is up to date and clear.
   • ensure that all relevant input from core group members, panels, and other commentators is included at an appropriate level (long e-mail is inappropriate - this is anyway available in the e-mail archives at http://www.isi.edu/isd/spar/admin.html if we need to refer back to it).
   • ensure that the options for resolution of the issue, if more than one, are summarized or clear.
   • add a recommendation for the resolution of the issue.
   • e-mail spar-core@isi.edu to ask for the issue to be considered and to see if a consensus is reached. Be sensitive to travel of core group members, but seek to respond quickly to such calls. (It is suggested this should be within 2 working days).
6. The outcome of the call for resolution of the issue can be:
   • issue is resolved, the resolution should be noted in the text of the issue. The recommended changes to the SPAR document will be made.
   • Issue resolution is premature, more information or input should be sought, add a note that the attempt to resolve the issue did not lead to a consensus, list the actions to get additional input, alter the "to be resolved by" version if necessary.
   • Disagreement that is unlikely to be resolved by further discussion. This should be noted in the issue text. A formal vote may be necessary to break such a deadlock in extreme cases! If so all positions or votes should be noted in the issue text, and the majority view should prevail - casting vote is with the technical lead for SPAR:-)
7. After an issue has been resolved, the issue summary and detailed issue page should be checked back into the central issue pages and removed form the core group members distributed issue pages.

All issues are available via the SPAR Home Page Issues Section. However, some of the issue summaries and details will be maintained at the web sites of those people responsible for tracking the issue and for building notes relating to it.

For each issue there is a summary normally one or two paragraphs in length. These are maintained centrally on the outstanding issues list, or may be maintained at other sites for those handling the issue. If they are held in a distributed way, a suitable index entry is maintained in the SPAR Home Page Issues Section.

There may optionally be a more detailed page (and perhaps associated information). If so this is kept as ISSUES/issue-xxxx.html. An index to the more detailed entries available is kept on the SPAR Home Page Issues Section.

When an issue is handled, a short description of the outcome is written into the summary and it is passed to the central site for incorporation into the Previous Issues list.

URLs should be relative to ease the transitions when a web area is archived or moved to another server.

Core Group members should seek to use a directory for their distributed web pages that can stay for a long period and use a suitable directory name such as spar or SPAR. It is recommended that you have a directory in that called IMG for figures, etc. It is recommended that you have a directory in that called ISSUES for detailed issue entries.

Sample Web Pages

• Blank Page in SPAR Project Format

  It is recommended that Core Group members copy the logos darpa.gif and afrl-logo.gif to a directory IMG in the same directory as the web page. You may refer to your corporate logo and URL in the bottom right corner. You should alter the lines referring to the person maintaining the page.

• Blank Detailed Issue Page Format

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Page maintained by Austin Tate (a.tate@ed.ac.uk), Last updated: Fri Apr 28 14:35:19 2000