From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,38fc011071df5a27 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-28 07:55:50 PST Path: news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!elnk-pas-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F76F66C.80009@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How to get a =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBConventional_Ada_Library=AB?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_=28Was=3A_Ideas_for_Ada_200X=29?= References: <6a90b886.0305262344.1d558079@posting.google.com> <3ED4A94C.2020501@noplace.com> <3ED6A852.75AC0133@adaworks.com> <3ED74ED3.4020505@noplace.com> <3ED7C8C5.3070902@cogeco.ca> <3ED826BB.9010509@noplace.com> <3F61BA28.3060507@crs4.it> <3F6205B8.3070402@attbi.com> <3F6316DC.7080106@noplace.com> <3F743AE7.5050305@noplace.com> <3F74E2A6.6020907@comcast.net> <3F75A5E3.6040505@noplace.com> <3F761DC6.3050801@comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 14:55:50 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.27.194 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net 1064760950 209.165.27.194 (Sun, 28 Sep 2003 10:55:50 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 10:55:50 EDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:71 Date: 2003-09-28T14:55:50+00:00 List-Id: O.K. I'll conceed that they eventually got it fixed. But my point was that a) it would have been easy to create a spec that at least provided a portable "standard" interface right from the get-go and b) that if there was a mechanism for extending the language - at least with respect to libraries - that didn't require updating the ISO standard, it would not be nearly so difficult or time-consuming to get these sort of corrections made. I like having the standard and the ARM being as thorough as it is. I'd just like to see a mechanism for getting things like library components "standardized" across compilers without needing to go through all the rigamarole that has to happen in order to update the ARM. Had such a mechanism been in place, getting the numerics packages added at a post-Ada83 date would have been a piece of cake. It would also enable us to get extensions to the language capabilities done in some cycle time smaller than 10 years. MDC Robert I. Eachus wrote: > > > But the NumWG work did result in an ISO standard, well before Ada 95 > came along. It probably would have been nice to have the ACVC require > the vendors provide exactly that package but that didn't happen. > However, the packages, including Complex and Simple packages were > printed as an issue of Ada Letters, including all the specs, and a place > to get a portable generic implementation. > > As I said, it would have been nice if it had happened faster, but it > didn't. Those four packages were effectively folded into the numerics > annex of Ada 95. It would have been nice if the work had finished > sooner. But that was not the big issue. The big issue, which Ada 95 > implements a nice compromise on, was whether Ada should specify the > accuracy of floating-point arithmetic. At the time Ada 83 was being > finalized, the IEEE floating point specifications were still not ready. > And as a result there were machines where the floating-point hardware > was very good, such as the VAX, and some where it was awful. (The IBM > 360/370 family in particular.) > > If we had tried to add the math libraries into the base standard in > 1981/82, the best that IBM hardware could have done was probably digits > 1 for single precision and digits 4 for double precision. (Yes, the IBM > floating point model, combined with the known algorithms for the > trancendental functions, was that bad. And there were C, Fortran, and > BASIC implementations which did that badly, not on difficult operations > like X**Y, but on sine and tangent.) Do you think IBM would have gone > along with that? I don't, and I was there. > > Also there was a desire to make it possible to compile an Ada program on > a machine with 256k of main memory. Back then that wasn't an L2 cache > on your laptop computer. There weren't any laptop computers, and many > mainframes in use had 256k of memory or less. (Most VAX 11/780s were > shipped with 128k of memory, although customers usually upgraded that > pretty quickly. In fact EMC got its start selling memory upgrades for > VAXes.) > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================