Jeff and Duane, Thanks for your comments.

1) Yes, the customer is always right. He wants what he wants and that's that! End of story. (Besides the debate I referred to was amongst ourselves, not us vs. customer...)

2) As for me, or any QA/metrologist/CMM guy, being the "intermediary" between designer and application, I thought that was what GD&T was for; to eliminate the need for INTERPRETATION. GD&T is a precise language that can explain completely what the customer wants. (or at least in my opinion, as nearly completely as anything yet devised by man...) Good communication has always been essential for success in ANY endeavor. In war. In love. In engineering design. The better the customer can explain to the designer what he wants, the better that engineer can explain things to the poor schmuck that's gonna try fabricating and measuring the thing so that the customer gets what he wants. IF WELL APPLIED, and that's the catch, the best universal language we have to do that is GD&T. However, I digress...

3) My questions still remain: a) Using ASME Y14.5M - 1994, can FORM be controlled by a ROUGHNESS spec? Yes? No? or Maybe? b) Are JIS drawing standards vastly different from ASME standards?