Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: (So-Called) ANSI C Message-ID: <6941@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: 6 Jan 88 04:03:12 GMT References: <11124@brl-adm.ARPA> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 57 In article <11124@brl-adm.ARPA> dsill@NSWC-OAS.arpa (Dave Sill) writes: >I think this is due to several things. More than one person posted information about the first formal public review of the Draft Proposed American National Standard for Information Systems -- Programming Language C to this very newsgroup, and it was announced in several other places including trade periodicals. There was no $60+ per copy fee for keeping updated. The only draft I know of that was available for purchase was the first formal public review version, which I am told did cost $60+ for the one issue. (There may also have been a very preliminary "C Information Bulletin" for sale, years ago.) Information concerning the proper method for sending in public comments was shipped with the review draft. That information was also posted to this newsgroup and other places. When the next public review draft becomes available, I'm sure there will be a suitably informative announcement here. The printing/distribution fee, besides recouping some of the cost of producing the document, also serves to limit much of the formal public commentary that the committee has to wade through to mostly thoughtful remarks from people who care. I hate to think of the mess we would have if every reader of this newsgroup, for example, sent in a random or redundant comment -- X3J11 is obliged to attempt a satisfactory response to every formal public review comment received. I'm especially aware of this, because I edited the previous official response document (based on committee input), which ran to over a hundred typeset pages for those "measly 32 letters" we received. It took X3J11 something like three quarterly meetings to respond to all those comments and other known "open issues". We sure hope there will be less work for the next batch. If we've done our job right, there should be no serious problems to fix in the second review draft. Anyone who thinks X3J11 is not doing all it reasonably can to accommodate outside concerns about the content of the standard is simply wrong. There has been a tremendous amount of effort expended considering virtually every public comment, formal or informal, received during the entire standardization process. Just because your pet idea was not adopted, does not mean that it was not taken seriously. Occasionally, the point of a comment is not fully understood at first, or perhaps its significance is not appreciated; the best defense against this is to make your comment as clear as possible, anticipating possible reactions to it and addressing them in advance. Often, examples help immensely. An argument that the committee is persuaded by will "sell" the desired change; otherwise the proposal will be rejected. At this late stage of the process, it requires a very strong argument to "sell" any substantive change, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. Reminder -- this is all my unofficial personal commentary, not X3J11's, the Army's, or anybody else's.