[r-t] various

[Philip Earis]

Robin:
"Quite right BUT! Having never seen a line for Gluon, I thought I'd try my 
usual blue-line printer - but the p.n. wasn't there. I found it easily, 
however, in the provisionally named section of the 'most'
official site - methods.org.uk. Odd! The official site records it, but a 
non-official site-of-choice doesn't"

Robin, you're being disingenuous at best, or more likely a bit stupid.

I've no idea which "non-official-site-of-choice" you were using, but I 
strongly suspect its search pulls info off the methods committee library. 
The fact this "non-official" site doesn't give any results kind of 
demonstrates my point, and demolishes yours.

Even if you go to methods.org.uk, if a ringer was looking for the notation 
for Gluon it's only natural he/she would click on on the top link:

"<Fast and friendly method collections> Find the place notation and other 
information about any method quickly and easily. Answer questions like “What 
is X Major?” or “Has Y been used as a method name?”

This clearly helps the viewer of the site to "find the place 
notation...about any method".  I therefore click on this, and I get the 
option: "If you are not sure of the classification of the method you are 
looking for or if you want to know whether a particular name has been used 
for any method, use the <All class method index>"

So I click on the link to the "All class method index", look under the 
letter "G", and surprise surprise there's absolutely no mention of Gluon.

Of course, it will be intuitive to find Gluon "easily" on methods.org.uk, as 
you say, because there's no search facility, and pretty much any visitor 
will know that rather than looking in the prominent all-class method index, 
you simply have to go to the buried "Other material" collection of the site, 
then click on "Supplementary Method Collections" (10th link down on the 
page), then go to the "Provisionally Named Methods" section and click on 
"index", then scroll down some way to find the ever-so-helpful 
non-hyperlinked result:

"Gluon Little Alliance            Maximus  468"

To add insult to injury, the top of the page has the big warning: "Important 
Notice - These method collections are the copyright of Anthony P. Smith". 
You couldn't make it up!

And where are methods like Stromboli Bob Minor, or Mersey Ferry minor? They 
don't even appear in this collection (copyright Tony Smith) of 
"provisionally named methods".

I know you are only trying to fly the flag for your committee, and I do 
realise there is a lot of important hard work (which I salute) and value in 
maintaining methods libraries. But this only accentuates the indefensible 
sad current situation - that while so much hard work has been done, the 
libraries are severely and needlessly compromised by the value-judgements 
needlessly imposed by their custodians.