Re: Question for the folks who designed Ada95

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

Well, we've been over this before. I believe.  The proper 
level of standardization of the optional elements of the 
program is the development organization, ie, one development 
shop <=> one style. There are optional elements wrt 
whitespace, case, comments, etc. I hope we don't ban these 
because any particular arrangement thereof might not 
exactly suit the reader; it is reasonable for an 
organization to prescribe a standard usage of these.  One 
more optional element isn't going to hurt that much.  

I expect that multi-language projects will become more 
common, and that allowing the optional inclusion of 
some extraneous typography to make Ada more readable 
for those who don't do Ada continuously  might be 
advantageous.

I realize that you are justifiably frightened that somewhere, 
someplace, somebody will commit some deplorable vice totally 
beyond our control with optional empty parentheses after a 
function call not requiring parentheses, if these were allowed.  
Please let me know what that perversion is, so that I may 
salivate in longing depravity, even though the chance of 
getting  such a libertine proposition past the powers that be 
of the Ada world is insignificant.  

Al

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> 
> In article <3726039A.916FC0F3@easystreet.com>, Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com> writes:
> 
> > Couldn't the ()'s for a 0-parameter call be optional for clarity for
> > those who think they enhance clarity?
> 
> Certainly, so long as you guarantee that the text will automatically
> change to suit the tastes of the person reading it, even from hardcopy
> at the bus stop.  For precedent see the dictionary reference to "Pooka"
> in the play "Harvey".
> 
> Until paper engineering catches up with literature, favoring readers
> should mean standardised (..ized? :-) spellings.
>