[r-t] Decisions, decisions..

[Philip Saddleton]

As evidenced by recent post to this list, there is far less consensus on 
the need to redefine what constitutes a peal, rather than how its 
constituents might be described. I think that refactoring the Decisions 
and making significant changes to their effect ought to be separate 
activities.

Specifics:

Part 1:
A.30. Needs to make it clear that the complete Extents whose rows are 
excluded can include a cover bell, or peals of Doubles and Minor rung in 
separate extents would not be permitted. Note that in this case this 
would be a relaxation of the current Decision, in which e.g. a round 
block of 840 containing the rows of separate extents of Doubles and 
Minor cannot be rung in a multi-extent round block.

B.1. Would mean that Magenta Little Place Maximus would be redefined as 
a Differential. Note that there is nothing in the existing Decisions 
that prohibits two Methods from having the same plain course.
However, if methods consisting of a single lead, or that are false in 
the plain course are permitted, there ought to be something to prevent 
arbitrarily redefining several leads of a method as a new method.

C.2. The reasoning behind the existing (J)A.2.(b) is that most ringers 
think of a call as a way of jumping to a different point on the line, 
i.e. missing out part of the method. Inserting an unrelated set of 
changes into a lead can hardly be considered as ringing the same method. 
Of course the same effect could be had by having two consecutive calls, 
one altering the changes rung, and the other omitting changes. I 
wouldn't be too fussed if (J)A.2.(b) was reworded to "one or both of the 
following", but I think it important to make the distinction.

Part 2:
A.6 and A.9 need to be combined, or separate sections are needed to deal 
with methods with one and more than one hunt bell - the existing (E)B. 
and (E)C. are much clearer.

A.10. I assume the inclusion of 'Slow Course', 'Single', 'Double' and 
'Reverse' is deliberate.

C. The existing Decision (G) is inadequate, but I don't think it should 
be scrapped without putting something in its place. I have ideas on this 
that are too complex to put here, but in principle:
- an extension construction can be defined for any block of changes
- work at different stages ought to be clearly related, with nothing 
occurring in the extension that does not occur in the parent (the 
minimum definition of 'work' being a place and the blows either side of it)
- the construction should lead to a valid block of changes at an 
infinite series of stages

PABS

On 12/06/2014 18:11, Tim Barnes wrote:
> With Ander moving us on to proper ringing theory, I almost regret coming
> back to decisions.  But FWIW, and as previously mentioned, the link below
> is to an attempt to show what a revamped set of decisions might look like.
> Any and all feedback is very welcome, including the kind of stinging
> criticism this list does so well!  Reply here, or to me offline, as you see
> best.