Introduction and Preliminary Conventions

Source: Jef Raskin, "Introduction and Preliminary Conventions" (11 September 1979)-- in "The Macintosh Project: Selected Papers from Jef Raskin (First Macintosh Designer), Circa 1979," document 1, version 5.
Location: M1007, Apple Computer Inc. Papers, Series 3, Box 10, Folder 1.

1. CHANGE OF NAME

To avoid using only female names on projects, it has been suggested that each major project be assigned the name of a variety of apple. To begin with, what once was the "Annie" project is now called the "Macintosh" project.

2. CATALOGING TECHNIQUE FOR MACINTOSH DOCUMENTS

As each document pertaining to Macintosh is written, it will be given a serial number. A catalog will be kept on a diskette in my files. I therefore request that any document pertinent to the Macintosh project not be released until it has been cataloged. This will permit any interested party to know what documents have been written, and will allow us to obtain and use these documents when necessary. The catalog will also be available in printed form upon request.

3. INTERNAL DESIGN OF DOCUMENTS

It would be appreciated if each item in each document be numbered, so that we may easily refer to it in other documents, for example:

Document 4, Version 3, Item 6.4.

The heading for each major numbered section will be in all caps, with subsections having the first letter of the first word capitalized.

4. USE OF EDITOR FOR DOCUMENTS

For improved communication, documents should, whenever possible, be prepared on the Pascal Editor, with appropriate control characters for Colin's formatting program. A typical heading for each document might be:

DOCUMENT *** VERSION ***
THE MACINTOSH PROJECT
TITLE: ***
AUTHOR: ***
DATE: ***

This will facilitate building a library of Macintosh documents, and easily allow modification and updating of these documents.

5. The file name of each document shall be of the form Mx.y.text where x is the document number and y is the version number. The catalog is M0.x.text.

6. The responsibility for maintaining the catalog shall initially be Jef's, but may be assigned to another member of the Macintosh team when appropriate.

7. Distribution lists and dates by which comments must be received shall be part of the cover letter, and not part of the document.


Document created on 6 June 2000;