meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Usenet Administration) (10/01/88)
In the latest C standards meeting, the X3J11 committee voted to submit the standard to it's parent body (X3) for approval as an official dpAns standard. It is anticipated that the final version with the editorial changes from the last meeting will be sent to X3 in December or January. If there are no changes from the X3 level review, the standard should be official in May or June as X3.159-1989. -- Michael Meissner, Data General. Uucp: ...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner Arpa: meissner@dg-rtp.DG.COM (or) meissner%dg-rtp.DG.COM@relay.cs.net
gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (10/03/88)
In article <1330@xyzzy.UUCP> meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner) writes: >In the latest C standards meeting, the X3J11 committee voted to submit >the standard to its parent body (X3) for approval as an official >dpAns standard. It is anticipated that the final version with the >editorial changes from the last meeting will be sent to X3 in December >or January. If there are no changes from the X3 level review, the >standard should be official in May or June as X3.159-1989. Here is a little more information: At the September 1988 X3J11 meeting, a number of editorial changes to the third public review draft were approved, but no substantive changes were made. Approval to submit the proposed ANS to X3 is contingent on review of the three official documents (Response to third public review, Standard, and Rationale), which will be in progress for the next couple of months. Submission of the final proposed Standard and Rationale documents, along with any replies by recipients of our official responses to third-round comments, to X3 should occur by 05-Dec-1988 if all goes well. Perhaps a note about "editorial" vs. "substantive" changes is in order, to forestall some possible complaints. A change was deemed "editorial" in nature if it served merely to clarify wording that could have been reasonably interpreted as meaning other than what the Committee had intended, so long as the previous intention of the Committee was preserved. On a couple of issues, the Committee had to settle whether a proposed change was editorial or substantive by voting on this question (if 1/3 of the voting members present thought a change was substantive, then it was taken to be so). We did vote whether or not to adopt some substantive changes, but there was not sufficient support for them to attain the 2/3 majority required for a substantive change to the proposed Standard. In fact, none of them even came close to that level of support; the Committee believed that the current specification is "good enough" for use as the official C Standard, and the editorial changes that were approved just serve to make the Committee's intentions clearer in a few places. In some cases, notably with respect to what a signal handler may safely do in a portable program, the clarification of intent may surprise someone who had not understood what actually had been intended (many believed the former wording to have been unambiguous, but not what we meant to say). Therefore, although the third public review draft Standard is substantially the same as the one being submitted for official approval, you should wait for the official Standard to see the exact wording before making any irreversible decisions based on it. Note that only Committee members participating in the final document review will really know the exact wording that gets sent to X3; some of the approved "editorial" changes may in fact not be made, depending on the judgement of the reviewers. I had reservations about this, but since I'm reviewing two of the three documents (and will have input to the third), I should be able to satisfy myself that nothing gets broken at the last minute. We'll see... P.S. (for those of you who can't tell the difference) This is yet another posting that is NOT an official X3J11 statement.
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (10/10/88)
In article <8600@smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes: >... Submission of the final >proposed Standard and Rationale documents, along with any replies >by recipients of our official responses to third-round comments, >to X3 should occur by 05-Dec-1988 if all goes well. Given that that's only two months away, I *trust* an effort is going to be made to get those official responses out to the recipients *PROMPTLY*?? The propagation delay last time was measured in months! (Sigh, I know it's not your fault, Doug, but I sure would be happy to hear that *something* has been done to avoid a repetition of last time's fiasco.) -- The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu