Strawman,woodenman and tinman

Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Lush]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Markus Kuhn]

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/>

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Thomas Peter Carr]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Michael F Brenner]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[David Wheeler]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Robert Dewar]

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 .....

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[David Wheeler]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Arthur Evans Jr]

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

Re: Strawman,woodenman and tinman

[Michael F Brenner]

Well, do you still have that copy so we can scan it on-line?