Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!kth!sunic!dkuug!freja!keld
From: keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: New US Rep to ISO C
Message-ID: <4623@freja.diku.dk>
Date: 26 Apr 89 00:58:27 GMT
References: <6.UUL1.3#5077@aussie.UUCP>
Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK
Lines: 62

rex@aussie.UUCP (Rex Jaeschke) writes:

>The primary objection at this stage comes from the Danes who want
>more readable trigraphs (don't we all.) However, all forms of
>their proposal have been soundly rejected by ANSI for 3-4 meetings now
>and last week in Seattle, even ISO voted not to back them on this
>issue. The problem stems from the fact that they use the ISO-646 
>character set which, as you may know, doesn't have characters such as 
>[, ], {, }, #, |, and \. They also wanted an infix operator ! as an 
>alternate to subscripting such that a!b == a[b]. There are technical 
>problems they have not solved (for example, how to write a[]) and this 
>is the main reason the proposal has been rejected. Also, their 
>proposal is in addition to the existing trigraphs, NOT instead of so 
>it adds more baggage.

Some comments: I have only seen one real technical reply to the
Danish proposal, and that was the response from the third public
review on the ANSI draft (p 71). Else I have only seen remarks like
"Do we want to discuss the alternate trigraphs issue: straw vote:
40 no, 0 yes". Also it has never been treated by X3J11 as a
request from ISO WG14, although it has been adopted by WG14
and WG14 has requested X3J11 that this was a very important thing
to accomplish. X3J11 not only has the responsibility of ANSI to
do the standard, but also have the technical responsibility of
the ISO standard. I think the reason that ISO WG14 backed out on
the proposal was that they were  tired after asking X3J11 several times
to accomodate the proposal, and ANSI resisted every time.

The technical problems with the proposal seems to be solvable,
according to the formal reply on the third public review
by X3J11 itself. At the Seattle meeting a problem was arisen
with A[], which already was described in the proposal paper
(notation A!; for A[]; ) and another problem with ambiguity
with the non-operator was also proposed solved by me by 
parenthenses, that is higher precedence for the postfix !-operator.
I would say if ANSI had meant to give the proposal a chance
they would have contacted us to solve the technical problems,
this furthermore as they have been asked by the ISO SC22
advisory group in a resolution to do every effort to accomodate
the WG14 requests.

X3J11's decision on this ISO WG14 proposal (WG14 had changed
the Danish proposal to make it acceptable to WG14) was that it would
not at all consider a change to the ANSI standard for this 
proposal. I would not regard that as a try to "do every effort
to accomodate WG14's requests".

Another thing that X3J11 let down was to follow the guidelines
for syncronisation of ANSI/ISO standardisation, which has been
proposed by ANSI itself and to the best of my knowledge been
approved by ISO SC22. The guidelines would mean that the ANSI C
standard would be delayed till ISO had got a DP successfully
thru the international ballot.
 
To me it seems like non-US input have had a very hard time getting thru
X3J11. Bill Plaugers multibyte support got thru, but this was
also written by one of the most prominent members of X3J11,
holding both the secretary, the international rep and the convenor
position of WG14. Neither the British nor the Danish proposals
have got a fair treatment by X3J11, in my humble opinion.

Keld Simonsen