Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!quintus!dave
From: dave@quintus.UUCP (David Bowen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Prolog standard
Message-ID: <1391@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jun 90 20:19:34 GMT
References: <15581@dime.cs.umass.edu> <3314@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <1389@quintus.UUCP> <3330@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Reply-To: dave@quintus.UUCP (David Bowen)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 33

In article <3330@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Richard A. O'Keefe writes:

>Roger Scowen is not the committee.  The proposal to have me involved in
>the standard was in fact rejected by a meeting of the ISO committee, or
>so I have been informed.  ALP(UK) and BSI say they are still interested,
>but again, they are not ISO.

BSI may send anyone it likes to the ISO committee meetings as a part
of its delegation.  You don't need any invitation from the ISO committee.
If there was any problem with the BSI route, I expect that you could
arrange with the convenor to attend as an observer.  

>I _sent_ a draft proposal last year.  It's available as an Auckland University
>Computer Science report.  It needs work.  In particular, it needs to be
>reconsidered in the light of the proposal currently before ANSI for a
>meta-standard for the floating-point part of programming language standards.

Good.  I hope that you will follow up on this.  (Was this issued as an ISO
document?)

>(a) When I worked at Quintus, some people senior to me repeatedly told me
>    to stop wasting time reading and responding to BSI/ISO documents.

It is true that we have changed our opinion of the Prolog standardization
process over the last 5 years or so.  At one time there did not seem to be much
probability of convergence on any kind of a reasonable standard.  Now there is
a strong likelihood of a standard which is not too far from "common Prolog".

>I have in the past volunteered in this newsgroup to manage an Australian
>mail server for standards documents if given machine-readable copies
>that could be made available that way.  

I don't see why documents couldn't be posted directly on this news group.