keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) (04/29/89)
rex@aussie.UUCP (Rex Jaeschke) writes: >> 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. >Absolutely not true. You may recall I spent quite some time with you >in Amsterdam at the drafting committee meeting wording your proposal >at ACE that evening so it could appear in the ISO minutes and be >sumbitted to X3J11. At the next X3J11 meeting it was definitely >discussed at X3J11 and presented by Plauger on behalf of ISO. Now I >understand that the X3J11 minutes were "light" in this area causing >some ISO people to believe the topic was not given a hearing (and >that's unfortunate.) Let me assure you, it did. It also addressed >the issue again after the London ISO meeting, and again, rejected it. Well, I remember Plauger once told me that he did not present the proposal as an ISO WG14 proposal as the proposal was not unanomously accepted in WG14 (4 for, 1 against), although there was a clear majority for the paper. So it was minuted as a proposal from "Tondering", not even Danish Standards, and I wonder why this information was so misinterpreted on the way from Plauger to the secretary of the X3J11 meeting. We never saw any formal response on this issue from this meeting. After the London meeting, Plauger presented it as an ISO issue, on behalf of Denmark. But it was not on behalf of only Denmark, but on behalf of the entire WG14 group, which also had done significant changes to the proposal. So I think it is fair to say that it has not been presented as a WG14 proposal. But would it had made any change, one might ask. >> 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. >Why would ISO back down if they really supported you? Actually, I >don't recall that Denmark has ever had any direct support for their >proposal from other countries. The Dutch and Finnish were not >particularly interested and neither was France. However, most of them >were not opposed to having the proposal presented to ANSI as part of >an ISO report. Your memory may be failing. We got quite strong support from the British and there were general consensus that our proposal had more sympathy than the proposal for multibyte support. >> I would say if ANSI had meant to give the proposal a chance >> they would have contacted us to solve the technical problems, >If you are trying to sell an idea to someone and they have absolutely >nothing to gain from it and it will cost them extra work to implement, >then the burden is on you to show that it can be done, and done >elegantly within the spirit of the language, and just exactly what the >cost of doing it is. All those not interested in it will likely look >for holes in your proposal so they can discard it. That's life. Yes, it is just life that ANSI X3J11 just seemed to work against our proposal. This in spite of strong WG14 recommendations and SC22 AG resoulutions asking ANSI to do "every effort to accomodate WG14 requests". ANSI could gain some easier, quicker and broader international acceptance from this, and also give a more elegant solution to some problems than the trigraphs solution gives. There seems to be consensus that the trigraphs are not the best invention in the standard. My comments on international input was only meant to be about the ISO input. I am not sure what other international input X3J11 has got. The two weightiest inputs from WG14 not stemming from the USA (that is the British and the Danish input) has not had much impact on the proposed ANSI standard, IMHO. Disclaimer: The above expressed opinions (if any) are mine only and does not necessary represent the Danish Standards Assoc. Also, please excuse my bad English. Keld Simonsen
keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) (04/29/89)
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes: >In article <4623@freja.diku.dk> keld@freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) writes: >The response >document on p. 71 spells out X3J11's reasoning in considerable >detail. If there is a flaw in the logic, it should be pointed out. Well, the document mentions an undescribed problem of the empty subscript in declarations, when this problem was already addressed in the paper. Also the document discussed the proposal's position towards trigraphs, when this position was clear from the paper. Other flaws: The X3J11 reasoning was not following the SC22 resolutions (which ANSI also have voted for) of support to non-ASCII character sets. These resolutions were meant to support readability and writablity too, together with portability. ANSI had a responsability to follow these ISO reslutions as they were developing the ISO too, alongside doing the ANSI standard. >>X3J11 not only has the responsibility of ANSI to do the standard, >>but also have the technical responsibility of the ISO standard. >Yes, that's true. Technical responsibility means, among other >things, judging the technical merits of proposals. X3J11 has >many times adopted changes to the Draft Standard that remedied >perceived technical deficiencies. I believe that X3J11 did not >think that the digraph proposal was a suitable remedy for a >perceived technical deficiency. The official response document >explained the Committee position on this issue. Well, to me it seems like the technical merits of the proposal has been judged by WG14, and WG14 seems to me to be a better body to judge such international issues, as they are the ones having the problems. So WG14 has said: this is a severe international problem and the solution seems to solve the problem sufficiently, and we want that in the ISO standard. Then ANSI just says no, it is not a problem. And ANSI says that ignoring ISO priorities, including ISO plenary resolutions - which was voted for by ANSI itself. >>The technical problems with the proposal seems to be solvable, >Very likely they are. However, in order to work on fixing the >problems in the proposal X3J11 would first have to be convinced >of the necessity for making any change at all in this area. >Clearly, they have not been convinced that there is a necessity. Yes, clearly. But some almost official ANSI statements (Rex) states that the reason for not letting this proposal thru was strictly technical. That is not true. And thus ANSI seems not to follow SC22 AG resolutions. >>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. >From what you have presented about this "synchronization", I >gather that it is up to ANSI to decide whether to delay >ratification of the proposed Standard until ISO etc. True. I am refering to the SC22 document N555. Disclaimer: The above express my opinion only.