robert@gitpyr.UUCP (Robert Viduya) (10/11/84)
Perhaps ANSI shouldn't be wasting their time with the X3J11 committee.
I'd much rather they spent time producing a set of standards that
describe standards for operating systems. The set needn't be all
encompassing as there are myriads of operating systems out there and,
depending on application need as well as personal preferences, there
ought to be different types of operating systems (just as there are
myriads of high level languages). However, what the standard should
include is a fixed minimum length for linker names ("All operating
systems that conform to this standard must support at least n
character symbols in their linker/loader."). I can think of a few
other things common between operating systems that, in my opinion,
ought to be standardized, but isn't (character set springs to mind
rather quickly; our site has three different systems, all with their
own character set).
As I said, the standard need not describe a supposedly ideal operating
system. It just needs to describe the things common between all
operating systems in an effort to standardize them. Then, once that
question is settled, go on and standardize languages to run on
operating systems that conform to the standard.
robert
--
Robert Viduya
Office of Computing Services
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone: (404) 894-4669
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