After spending a bit of time working on soemthing it’s easy to start feeling a little too attached it to be really subjective. I think everyone tries but we are all human and it’s inevitable. So, after some discussions (mostly negative) I found myself at a place whereby I couldn’t find the energy to continue the argument or pour any more energy into the formatting of the BeBook from the xml sources. It’s only xml, xslt and some css so anyone can do it, and hopefully they will!

It highlights another problem I’ve seen all too often though. Working on a project, especially at the start is a very lonely place. calls for feedback and comments go unheeded with people simply replying with “looks good”. It’s usually at the place where the xml BeBook is at that people finally take a look in detail or suddenly see some aspect that they’ve always ignored/missed before. The comes the usual round of “why is it this way” – despite all the iterations of explanation and discussions leading to this point.

In the case of the work I’ve been doing it’s more than that though. there seems to be a fear among some people to move on, to embrace something new and different. One comment summed up the inertia quite well: “I’m not used to it, they weren’t in the old one :)”

I guess the question that should be asked (and answered) is where things are truly headed and whether we really want to go there. If there is no room for improvement and change I certainly don’t want to travel along it!