Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Standards For C++ Message-ID: <1988Sep29.164824.25390@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <255@itivax.UUCP> <6590067@hplsla.HP.COM> Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 16:48:24 GMT In practice, in the absence of formal standards processes (e.g. ANSI), de-facto standards tend to be set by whatever documents are available. At present, we essentially have two levels of standard for the language itself: Bjarne's book, and his paper in the C++ Workshop proceedings (which includes multiple inheritance and a number of other things). The formal reference manual he now has in the works will probably supersede the latter in the public eye. Most every supplier will be trying to bring his product up from book level to paper level, but they've had less than a year to do that so far. I really don't see any grievous need for multiple levels of standard, certainly nothing sufficient to justify the grievous hassles that would result. There will *always* be inadequate implementations, but I do not see that we have any reason to legitimize them. The *lowest* level of quasi-official standard is, in fact, the real standard; let's set that at the level we really want, not at the lowest level we think we could put up with. Actually, our big problem at the moment is libraries, not the language proper. It's hardly surprising that libraries vary widely, when figuring out what to put in them requires gathering a diverse set of papers, Bell Labs tech reports, Usenet postings, etc., and trying to make sense of it all. We badly need a *single* readily-available document that describes a basic set of libraries in considerable detail. -- The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu