Mr. Weiss opens with a reference to the book’s “awkward andinterminable title.” The title, as it appears on the front, thespine, and the back is simply McGraw-Hill datacommunications dictionary. The other words Mr. Weissascribes to the title are clearly a summary of the contents.

Mr. Weiss takes issue with the use of the word“comprehensive.” The book’s only claim to comprehensivenessrelates to the scope of the individual definitions. It does not claim toprovide every possible definition, nor was it ever one of the book’sgoals to provide expansions of the more common acronyms andabbreviations, such as the ones Mr. Weiss cites. In fact, Mr. Weiss’sexamples are drawn from the more general field of telecommunications,particularly telephony, an area the book quite specifically seeks toavoid.

I considered writing the book as one section and, with theconcurrence of the editor and the consulting editor, decided thatseparate sections were more appropriate to the eclectic subject matter.Whether the occasional requirement to proceed to a topic or definitionvia the index, rather than directly, renders the book harder or easierto use is clearly a subjective assessment, as is the relatively minorissue of whether sections 2 to 6 should be classified asappendices.

Contrary to Mr. Weiss’s statement, the issue of indexalphabetization was very thoroughly addressed. Much thought went intothe index and to the use of cross-referencing within it. The allegedlyomitted “5ESS” entry can be found in the correct place,between “First in Chain” and “Flag Field.” Asfor V.24 circuit numbers (such as 104), they are indexed by their names(in this case, “Received Data”), as is customary. Anyonelooking up “Received Data” will have no difficulty findingthe boldface entry on page 106.

Mr. Weiss refers to the “deprecated vendor glossaries.”Nowhere are such glossaries deprecated. They are characterized,correctly and without criticism, as biased in favor of each vendor’sproducts.

Mr. Weiss questions the usefulness of the book to anyone other thanme. Given that it includes definitions and descriptions not readilyfound in other books sold as “dictionaries” or“glossaries,” it fills a need, albeit a niche need,expressed directly to me on a number of occasions by many people whoseexperience is confined to PCs and local area networks and who must nowinstall and understand gateway servers and 3270 or 5250 workstations forremote communication to IBM host systems. Fundamental aspects of IBM’s3270 and 5250 information display systems, otherwise difficult toresearch, are covered in Section 4. Section 5 provides a thoroughtreatment of the two leading interchange codes, ASCII andEBCDIC. Other than in CCITT, ISO, and IBMdocumentation, it is hard to find complete tables for either of thesecodes. It is also hard to find full and accurate listings of standardsorganizations, something this book addresses with extreme thoroughness.Those browsing through the book in a bookstore will be ableto quickly determine for themselves if it meets their needs. So far, areasonable number have made that determination in the affirmative.