* Strawman,woodenman and tinman @ 1998-04-24 0:00 Lush 1998-04-24 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 9+ messages in thread From: Lush @ 1998-04-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hello, I'm a 2nd year student in the department of computer science in the university of birmingham. I am currently doing an assignment on the devlopment of the specification of the documents from strawman to ironman. I am havinf extreme difficulties in obtaining these documents to see the development within these documents. I would greatly appriciate it if somebody can tell me where i can obtain these documents or just point out the transition of the deatailness of the specification (other than the fact that the specs of the requirments within the language from strawman to ironman bacame more detailed and refined due to feedback with refernce to the last document) if anybody out there can help then can you please mail me at jhw@cs.bham.ac.uk Yours Hopefully Jim Wai ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-04-24 0:00 Strawman,woodenman and tinman Lush @ 1998-04-24 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1998-04-25 0:00 ` Thomas Peter Carr 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 2 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread From: Markus Kuhn @ 1998-04-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Lush wrote: > I am havinf > extreme difficulties in obtaining these documents Extreme difficulties. Well, here's a short course in researching information: Ask altavista for "strawman woodenman tinman" and you'll immediately find a somewhat more complete reference such as: Woodenman Set of Criteria and Needed Characteristics for a Common DoD High Order Programming Language", David A. Fisher, Inst for Def Anal Working Paper, Aug 1975. etc. Full title, name of author and publication date is usually sufficiently good for successful interlibrary loan, your local librarian will know more. Many US university libraries have quite complete collections of all US government sponsored technical reports, at least on microfiche. Look also at the sponsoring organization for this publication: Try on altavista "Inst*-for-Def*-Analy*" and you will get to <http://www.ida.org/>, the organization that published these reports. Give them a call +1 703 845 2000 and ask them whether they can send you a copy of these ancient reports. Hope this helped ... Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-04-24 0:00 Strawman,woodenman and tinman Lush 1998-04-24 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn @ 1998-04-25 0:00 ` Thomas Peter Carr 1998-04-27 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 2 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread From: Thomas Peter Carr @ 1998-04-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Lush <jhw@cs.bham.ac.uk> writes: <snip> > ... I would greatly appriciate it if somebody can >tell me where i can obtain these documents ... <snip> Your best choice is to go to Ada History information at Ada Home: the Home of the Brave Ada Programmers at http://www.adahome.com/ The history information is at http://www.adahome.com/History/ and includes some informational references to Strawman, Woodenman, Tinman, and Ironman. It also contains an HTML copy of Steelman. You must remember that these documents were produced starting 23 years ago this month, which is an eternity to some people. My best recollection is that Strawman started out at around 4 or 5 pages and that the succeeding documents at least doubled in size with each new generation. This first three were not published widely, but Ironman and Steelman were published in the SIGPLAN Notices which your school library might have. Ironman was in the Dec 1977 SIGPLAN Notices and Steelman was in the Dec 1978 SIGPLAN Notices. Again your best choice is to use the information at Ada Home. /Tom -- Thomas Peter Carr | I have a dream, ... carr_tom@si.com (Internet) | M L King Jr 08/28/63 616-241-8846 / 616-241-7533 FAX (Telephone) | Smiths Industries, MS 214; 4141 Eastern Avenue SE; Grand Rapids, MI 49518-8727 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-04-25 0:00 ` Thomas Peter Carr @ 1998-04-27 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread From: Michael F Brenner @ 1998-04-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) JW > ... extreme difficulty in obtaining a copy of Straman, Woodenman, > and Tinman which led to Ironman and Steelman ... JW is not the only one interested in tracing the evolution of these requirements. I have wanted to do this for many years and have the same problem obtaining free copies of the documents. MK > Try: > a. Ask altavista > b. use Interlibrary Loan > c. see if there is a microfiche copy > d. ask how much IDA would charge TC > e. look on www.adahome.com/History/Steelman/intro.htm > f. Strawman (Apr 1975) was not widely published > g. Woodwnman (1975) either > h. Tinman (Jan 1976) either > i. Ironman is in Dec 1977 Sigplan Notices > j. Steelman is in Dec 1978 Sigplan Notices and the above URL Well, I tried to get the above on the Net and have not been able to do it, and also have not been able to get the 4 color language proposals and our answers to them (other than my own). It would be nice to see how we have evolved since we answered those proposals. I still believe a realtime way of doing variable length stuff would be cool, and enough macro pre-processing to select alternate package bodies is essential to the language. My later theories of exactly how to do realtime and how to make Ada run faster were not reflected in those earlier documents. There are some other possiblilities to look at: k. There are excerpts of the Strawman, Woodenman, and Tinman in Col. W's document at the URL (divided into 2 lines for e-mail): http//sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC/pol-hist/ history/holwg-93/holwg-93.htm l. The Librarian at the Ada IC at phone number 703-681-2451 might be able to photocopy them (Becca Norton?). m. It is a sin and a shame that ancient documents are not available on the Net yet. If someone will send me their copy, I will go to Kinkos and get Strawman, Woodenman, Tinman on-line immediately. n. What if everyone who responded to the 4 color language proposals scan in their own responses and send them in somewhere. Would AdaIC or HoBAP make room for them? I will not do it first, because (as reported above) my opinions have evolved with the language, and so I will wait until three others have revealed their prior opinions. o. In general, in this and other fields, there are few exceptions to the fact that ancient documents should be available on-line. We should support this in useful cases like Strawman, the color language proposals, and the responses to the color proposals, as well as more remote cases like preserving the inscriptions on the Mayan and Egyptian and Siamese Pyramids, and the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are not on the CD. Actually there is a much more recent document that needs to be on the Web. Before Ada-95 was even Ada-9X, there was a Requirements Document which was the only part of the process that people like me were permitted to submit input to. To this document, I submitted my requests for second-class packages (passing non-generic packages to generics), efficient use of the 32nd bit in unsigned numbers, etc., which Robert has often stated that he was unaware of any requirements for these things. It would be nice to have that document on-line. It would also be nice to have that document made on-going. That way, we could put into it the more recent suggestions we have been posting onto comp.lang.ada, so that they will be considered for Ada-2000X. There has to be an opportunity for input, even when the people in power do not necessarily agree with that input. Mike Brenner ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-04-27 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner @ 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 1998-05-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread From: David Wheeler @ 1998-05-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Michael F Brenner (mfb@mbunix.mitre.org) wrote: : JW > ... extreme difficulty in obtaining a copy of Straman, Woodenman, : > and Tinman which led to Ironman and Steelman ... I, too, would like to see Strawman, Woodenman, Tinman, Ironman, and the four "color" languages on-line. Obviously I think key historical documents are useful, because I scanned in Steelman earlier! If anyone does this, I encourage you to create an HTML version in which people can link to specific chapters or requirements. I did this with Steelman, as described in detail in http://www.adahome.com/History/Steelman/intro.htm For example, a link to http://www.adahome.com/History/Steelman/steelman.htm#3-2C brings up requirement 3-2C (which requires a Boolean type). The short perl script I used to create these internal links is in: http://www.adahome.com/History/Steelman/mklinks Mklinks is a text filter. Its input is an HTML file, which takes bolded headings beginning with numbers and creates an equivalent named anchor. Use it if you find it useful! --- David A. Wheeler dwheeler@ida.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler @ 1998-05-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1998-05-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) David Wheeler said <<I, too, would like to see Strawman, Woodenman, Tinman, Ironman, and the four "color" languages on-line. Obviously I think key historical documents are useful, because I scanned in Steelman earlier! >> I have no idea what the copyright statement for Steelman says, because I can' t find my copy right now, but most certainly the colored languages (red, blue, yellow, green) *are* copyrighted, and of course the copyrights are still valid. It will not be easy to clear the copyrights for posting these documents online. It is often extremely annoying that technical documentatoin is unnecessarily copyrighted ..... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-04-24 0:00 Strawman,woodenman and tinman Lush 1998-04-24 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1998-04-25 0:00 ` Thomas Peter Carr @ 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 1998-05-06 0:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 2 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread From: David Wheeler @ 1998-05-01 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Here's some information on the requirements documents that eventually resulted in Ada. "Strawman" was the first version of the requirements; it was distributed within the military departments and to a lesser extent in the academic community and industry. I don't know how to get a copy of it. Woodenman was produced next. The best reference to this document that I can find is as follows: "Woodenman - Set of Criteria and Needed Characteristics for a Common DoD High Order Programming Language," Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Working Paper, August 13, 1975. I've talked with IDA staff and they're unable to find an archived copy of this document; given that it's a working paper, that's understandable. Tinman was then developed. An official reference for this document is: High Order Language Working Group, "Department of Defense Requirements for High Order Computer Programming Languages - TINMAN", June 1976. A reference which you can actually order is: David A. Fisher, "A Common Programming Language for the Department of Defense - Background and Technical Requirements", Institute for Defense Analyses, Paper P-1191, AD-A028297, IDA Log Number HQ 76-18215, June 1976. Fisher's paper has not just the requirements but a great deal of background material and rationale, so Fisher's paper is 158 pages long. Ironman was issued in January 1977. Its requirements were substantially the same as Tinman but with a different format. An official reference for this document is: High Order Language Working Group, "Department of Defense Requirements for High Order Computer Programming Languages - IRONMAN", January 14, 1977. A reference which you can actually order is: David A. Fisher, "A Common Programming Language for the Department of Defense - Background, History and Technical Requirements", Institute for Defense Analyses, Paper P-1263, IDA Log Number HQ 77-19124, May 1977. Revised Ironman was issued in July 1977. An official reference for this document is: High Order Language Working Group, "Department of Defense Requirements for High Order Computer Programming Languages - Revised IRONMAN", July 1977. Fisher did some work regarding numeric computation, and an appendix to that report includes the basic requirements of revised ironman. So a reference which you can actually order which has the requirements is: David A. Fisher and Philip R. Wetherall, "Rationale for Fixed-Point and Floating-Point Computational Requirements for a Common Programming Language" Institute for Defense Analyses, Paper P-1305, IDA Log Number HQ 77-19836, January 1978. I don't have the authority to permit you to place IDA papers on the web. However, I can tell you how to order IDA papers, which may help. Defense contractors can order the final IDA papers from DTIC; everyone can order the final IDA papers via NTIS: Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) 8725 John J. Kingman Rd, STE 0944 Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6218 USA (703) 767-8274 National Technical Information Services (NTIS) 5285 Port Royal Rd. Springfield, VA 22161 USA (800) 553-6847 (for technical report orders; U.S. toll-free) I imagine the Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) & Ada Information Clearinghouse have copies of these things somewhere; you'll need to ask them. David Fisher no longer works for IDA, but he's still around, and he might have copies of these early documents. I'm not sure who you ask for permission to publish on the web; my guess is that you'd ask AJPO. --- David A. Wheeler dwheeler@ida.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler @ 1998-05-06 0:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 1998-05-08 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread From: Arthur Evans Jr @ 1998-05-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <6id35l$27e1@news.ida.org>, dwheeler@ida.org wrote: > "Strawman" was the first version of the requirements; > it was distributed within the military departments and to a lesser extent > in the academic community and industry. Pretty close. In the early 70s DoD was concerned about the proliferation of high order languages (HOLs) and created a Working Group to study the problem. HOLWG distributed within DoD a draft requirements document, solicited responses, and received almost nothing. In mid-1975 they put out another version called the Strwaman Requirements which was sent to groups within DoD and to selected DoD contractors. I had just gone to work at Bolt Beranwek and Newman, and my boss gave me a copy, said some sort of response was called for, and asked me to draft one. Anyone even moderately competent at language design recognized that the requirements were self-contradictory and, given the then state of the art, vastly over ambitious; I said so. Later, I learned that Strawman had been deliberately written that way in order to elicit responses from people (like me) who were perfectly happy to point out how DoD didn't understand the problem, but who probably wouldn't otherwise have bothered replying. (Clever! I think Dave Fisher gets credit for that idea) [snip] > Tinman was then developed. An official reference for this document is: [snip] After Tinman came out, there was a conference at Cornell at which position papers were presented on it. The procedings were published: Design and Implementation of Programming Languages DoD Sponsored Workshop, Ithaca 1976 Lecture Notes in Computer Science #54 Springer-Verlag This book is not likely in print, but many libraries have complete collections of this series. The book includes a complete copy of Tinman as an Appendix. Art Evans Arthur Evans Jr, PhD Ada Consulting ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman 1998-05-06 0:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr @ 1998-05-08 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 0 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread From: Michael F Brenner @ 1998-05-08 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Well, do you still have that copy so we can scan it on-line? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1998-05-08 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 9+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1998-04-24 0:00 Strawman,woodenman and tinman Lush 1998-04-24 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn 1998-04-25 0:00 ` Thomas Peter Carr 1998-04-27 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 1998-05-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1998-05-01 0:00 ` David Wheeler 1998-05-06 0:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 1998-05-08 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner
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