Five members of the Central Council's Methods Committee assembled in Winchester on a warm January Sunday for their (delayed) first meeting since the CC event in Leicester.
Early items on the agenda were passed nem. com. so the Diary could be discussed early and at length. The only items of interest from the early part of the agenda was the American who sent an e-mail to our chairman starting "Honored Mr. Smith" and a short discussion on other extensions of Little methods and Principles.
Minor corrections to the methods introduced into the Diary in 2007 were discussed and then the discussion moved on to the choice for 2008, but not before we had taken on board a suggestion from one of our readers. It had already been decided to revise the Major pages - all 20 of them. Scientific Triples has to stay in situ since there are touches of it on the reverse. Notwithstanding comments received, it was remarked that there would be more "flak" if the Standard-8 were omitted and so these are retained, albeit four of them just as lines. Additionally, methods required to make up the "Nottingham-8" along with others will be included as lines. (Over lunch, we remarked that, if we learnt methods by ropesight as we were all taught to, we wouldn't need numbers, but that's not the world as it is, is it?). (Lunch once again came up to the standard whose reputation goes before it.)
One member of the committee admitted to being quite happy to miss-off external places in place notations when amongst friends whilst another wondered what you called a method with Cornwall above the treble, and Cornwall below! A 30 minute interview on-line with the Chairman was suggested as to why certain methods had been chosen.
Similar discussions took place as to Plain and Treble Bob methods with the result that some more data on Kent/Oxford variations would be included.
Much of what followed was a highly technical discussion on the vagaries of the transfer of output to the printing process and this was repeated with the discussion of the next Doubles Collection.
At the indulgence of the Chairman, A.O.B. was taken in which one member wondered about relaxing the requirement of retention of Plain Bob lead ends in method extension (Decision (G)B5). It was remarked that one extension of Surfleet S. Minor gives a sequence of 12, 20, 28,… implying that the parent is not in fact a member of the sequence! Some methods can generate three sequences of extension, each of which has the same lead-end sequence, but not necessarily that of Plain Bob.
The final business was the XML specification, at which point your correspondent gave his excuses and left.
ROBIN WOOLLEY
The Ringing World, March 16, 2007, page 272