Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Third public review of X3J11 C
Message-ID: <1988Aug25.164339.4183@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <8365@smoke.ARPA> <225800053@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 88 16:43:39 GMT

In article <225800053@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>>I suggest that you GET INVOLVED in drafting
>>the NEXT (revised) standard.
>
>The problem is, how does one do this? ...  [If you're inattentive]
>you are going to know about it only AFTER the standard gets approved,
>when the next version of your compiler comes out and your programs
>stop compiling. I never heard about Fortran 77 until my programs
>refused to run because a new compiler didn't support Hollerith fields.

If you wish to be involved in drafting standards, you are going to have
to sit up and pay attention so you know when work is in progress.  X3J11
was fairly well publicized as such things go; anyone who was seriously
monitoring language-standards activity heard about it.  Again, I'm afraid
the answer is that the only way to get involved in such things is to make
an effort to do so.  This will generally involve spending both time and
money on it.  A good first step is to join ACM's SIGPLAN (Special Interest
Group on Programming Languages); its monthly journal, SIGPLAN Notices,
publishes (a) quite a bit of drivel, and (b) a certain amount of news on
things like impending standards work.  For example, subscribers to it
were not caught unprepared by Fortran 77, since an entire (preliminary)
draft of the F77 standard appeared there.  That was kind of an extreme
case, which hasn't been repeated, but in general, if you subscribe to
the major publications of the programming-languages community, you will
not be caught by surprise by standards efforts.
-- 
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu