[comp.lang.rexx] ANS REXX Committee news

a665@mindlink.UUCP (Anthon Pang) (01/15/91)

ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) writes:
> 
> News from the ANS X3J[008qXX Standards Committee
> [...]
> BTW, we can't see having a draft done before 1982, and getting approval
> before 1983.  But that does look possible, given the above ground rules.
> 

Is this a typo or a repost?  Or are we really 7 years behind in getting a first
draft done?

ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire) (01/16/91)

News from the ANS X3J[008qXX Standards Committee

The first meeting was held in Washington DC on January 8-9.
In attendance were most REXX developers and distributors, as
well as several user ogranizations.

We spent about 1/2 day learning a bit about the ANS X3 bureaucracy,
1/2 day figuring out how we could get anything done in a reasonable
time frame therein, and established some goals for the first
standard.  We also began general discussions of some of the issues
involved, and made a few very preliminary work assignments.

I suppose the most important point was our feeling on the scope of the
first standard.  Almost all of us felt that significant "improvements"
to the language were not part of our initial goal.  We expect that the
first standard will pretty much simply codify what Mike Cowlishaw has
wrought up to now.

So we expect to write a "standard" based on Mike's definition
of the language, and then tighten it up a bit and fill in any "holes"
that make for ambiguities that exist (some do, as can be seen in
a few minor variations between how the various implementations handle
certain specific complex cases.)  We also plan to look at things in
the language that relate to other platforms and operating environments
than those originally in use, that are currently causing difficulties.
Such things come up more for the Amiga and Unix implementations, I
suppose, although what we do about them may affect the other
implementations just a bit.

For example, we were thinking about functions like chdir(), which many
implementations have, even though they are not part of the "language".
We might make them part of the language standard, and demand that the
functions exist (and fail in a well-defined manner) on platforms 
that have no directory structure.  Another example of environment-specific
concerns is the handling of tab as white space in syntactical analysis
and the operation of the parse instruction...

We expect to think about extensions too.  We hope to publish our thoughts
on what kind of things might show up as extensions in a later standard.
If one or two of the ideas we consider seem to be of critical
importance to the community in general, they may find their way into
the first standard.  We are in touch with groups like Share on these
points, so we certainly won't be making up any wierd extensions on
our own.

Mike Cowlishaw is on the committee, and we are all glad to have his
views on why the current language definition is the way it is.  We
all promise we'll do our best not to "mess up" the language in any way.
I hope to keep the user community informed of our thoughts through
this means, so we can have all relevent input, and there won't be
any surprises when we're all done.

The next meeting is scheduled for Asilomar, May 6-7 (right before the
next SLAC REXX symposium, to be held there as well).  We hope to have
approved officers (red tape...), a draft standard table of contents
(based loosely on the recent C standard), and the beginning of syntax
diagrams for the language.  We expect to use email extensively for
our discussions, and have set up a private broadcaster to help with
this.  I'm sure that any comments directed to myself or any other
member of the committee will reach all of us, and any comments are
welcome and desired.

BTW, we can't see having a draft done before 1982, and getting approval
before 1983.  But that does look possible, given the above ground rules.

==========================================================================

Ed Spire                           email: ets@wrkgrp.com      (on uunet)
The Workstation Group              voice: 800-228-0255
6300 River Road, Suite 700            or  708-696-4800
Rosemont, Illinois  60018            fax: 708-696-2277