Re: friend classes in ada95

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@earthlink.net>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
  
> Again, your memory is flawed here, you should check the minutes
> of the Salem meeting. In particular, the rejection was nothing
> to do with lack of consensus behind any one scheme, but rather
> to do with dislike for the whole idea. In particular you should
> be able to recall the fierce opposition of the French delegation
> on this point :-)

    My memory of the discussion was that the debate was mostly between
leading, leading and trailing, and underscore as a letter, rather than
between those who favored some change and those in favor of no change. 
Of course, I might have missed some of the debate running various
errands, but I think I was there for most if not all of it.  In any
case, I think that the some people voted against change since there was
no strong consenus in favor of a single proposal.  I don't think I can
verify or falsify that from the minutes. 
> 
> > I personally think that the silliest part of this discussion
> > was on allowing leading underscores, and I think that was what
> > killed the most general alternative.  But all that is detail.
> 
> Yes, and incorrect detail at that, this was not at ALL the
> dynamics of the discussion. In particular, perhaps you can
> recall the strong point that was made that with modern
> variable width type fonts, it is hard to tell how many
> underscores are in a sequence of underscores ... that was
> the primary French objection to the motion.

   I didn't say it was all of the discussion, just the silliest part.
Some delegates actually thought it was important for interfacing to C,
while many
who actually wrote interfaces to C found the idea of such names
contaminating their code distasteful.  As a result we had a lot of
people talking past each other--one group feeling it was necessary for
functionality and the other--including the French, opposed on style
grounds. 
 
> > It was an extremely close call to even consider allowing the
> > language design team to even work on this,

> This is a completely incorrect memory, there was no close call.
> Just look at the minutes!

    And what will I find?  There was a discussion of whether or not it
was too late to consider changes to the grammar.  However, since the
existing grammar was obviously broken, I don't think that there was even
a vote on that.  Then there was a discussion of whether to require the
design team to make the smallest possible change.  Tucker strongly
argued that he thought that the total (text) change for the more
radical--and elegant--fix was small, and offered to work on it
overnight.  He did, and it was small, but I think that, with time to
sleep on it, everyone who understood the issue was in favor, even if it
had turned out to be a large change.   So, as I recall, there was a
close call on whether or not it was too late for a change of this
mangitude, but once a full proposal was put on the table, no one was
against it.  (In fact the only subject of any discussion at all was the
order of keywords, resolving to "type Foo is abstract tagged limited
private;"