Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiva!jeff
From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Prolog standard (was: Panel Discussion)
Message-ID: <549@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Aug 88 17:11:46 GMT
References: <2546@mandrill.CWRU.Edu> <528@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <297@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 17

In article <297@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>To answer the last question first, it is not the companies which sell
>Prolog systems which decided not to participate.  In order to be "on"
>an ISO panel, you have to have been sent by your national standards
>organisation.  For Quintus, say, to have a representative on the ISO
>committee would mean that we would have to get ANSI to agree that it
>was a good idea to have ANSI participation.  They never asked _us_.

Perhaps I should have stated the problem more clearly: the problem is
that there is no US national level work on Prolog standards, which is
what allows US participation in ISO work.  In other words: why is
there no Prolog equivalent to x3j13 or x3j11?  My understanding was
that no one had been very interested.  Perhaps this is wrong and the
real problem is that no one knows how to go about it.  (Note here that
there is a difference between getting ANSI to agree and ANSI never
asking -- I don't think there is anything actively working to prevent
US work on Prolog standards.)