Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!jima
From: jima@hplsla.HP.COM (              Jim Adcock)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Standards For C++
Message-ID: <6590064@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 19 Sep 88 16:53:59 GMT
References: <255@itivax.UUCP>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 46

At this point in time what I'd rather see is an 
agreed upon "subset" of the language that we could
expect all "C++" compilers to accept -- while still
allowing the various compiler camps to experiment
with new features that may prove to be generally
useful above and beyond this core set.

I'd pretty much like the "agreed upon" core set
of the language to be pretty much the stuff that
bs has described up through and including multiple
inheritence.

Let people continue to work on the "unsolved" problems
like parameterized classes, multiprocessing, error
recovery, memory management, dynamic linking of new classes.....

.... and when good solutions to these problems are
proven out in various people's compilers then maybe
we can begin to include these features in the 
language at large.

Still, one has to wonder if the set of language features
really needed to solve "the programming problem" at large
isn't a larger set than the average programmer would want
to bite off anyway?  Which might imply that ultimately
C++ compilers might head in the direction of a core feature
set, plus optional goodies for people with more specialized
needs.

Alternately [or in addition to], it might be nice if the 
various compiler camps could come up with agreed upon definitions
of various "levels" of the C++ language so that we could 
know what major features of the "C++ language" are going to
be available to us when we buy a particular vendor's
compiler.  

For example, a "level 1" implementation of a C++ compiler
might only support single inheritence, a "level 2" 
implementation of a C++ compiler might mean that multiple
inheritence is supported, "level 3" implementations of
the language might support parameterized classes ......

This would allow vendors to offer conforming implementations
of "C++" at various levels of sophistication, and customers
would then have reasonable expectations and knowledge of
what it is they're really buying.