RE: Bare decorations (was ...level 2 datums)
Maybe I am wrong, but the very fact that few people in the list jump into this discussion may be an indication that many of us are somewhat lost in the inter-relation between the purely math ideas and the technical details of IEEE implementations.
It may be a good idea to go back to "Level 1" (purely mathematical) description of decorations, to get a better understanding of the technical stuff that Nate, John, and Dan and discussing? Maybe we can get a (new version of) position paper explaining it? This will somewhat clarify all these things about bare decorations etc. and make the technical discussions more meaningful to us simple voters