Re: Required Metrics

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <pr7R4.8717$wb7.694952@news.flash.net>,
  "Ken Garlington" <Ken.Garlington@computer.org> wrote:

> "Could you cite ONE case *** in this thread *** where I argued
in favor of
> including ANY requirement, documentation or otherwise, in the
standard?"

No, and no one said you had. What I said, cued by YOUR post was
that you were one of the people who had suggested such
requirements during the design process.


> Certainly, I have argued for requirements *** in other
> conversations, in
> other places, at other times ***.

And that is what I was referring to.

> In those discussions, I've expected
> vendors to say "Wait a minute -- I don't think I understand
> what that means"

Why? Vendors were not present at these meetings, and this
is not a vendor issue, it is a language design issue. The
meeting I am thinking of was a listening session to understand
what people wanted in the Ada 95 standard. When you are
listening to what people want, you do not quarrel with them,
you listen! That was the ground rule (a good one) set by
Chris Anderson.

> or "I don't know of any reasonable way to do what you're
> asking". Now I know
> why they didn't object to them

No you don't, your are guessing (wrong!). The interesting thing
is that this battle for including documentation requirements was
fought much later on, and as you know people (like me and
Bob Duff) DID protest that it would be more useful to have
these as implementation advice. We lost the argument.

> It was preferable to just go along to make the users happy,
> and then not consider themselves constrained by these
> "requirements" when implementing the standard.

Ken, the only thing I can figure, since you keep repeating the
incorrect statement above is that you just don't understand
what language definitions and semantic requirements are about.
Of course one is constrained by requirements when implementing.
But the trouble is that if a requirement has no formal content,
then in the context of a language standard, it can be met in
almost anyway. The RM essentially says

You must provide kerbloggle, and then does not define what
kerbloggle means. This means that everyone makes up their
own mind what kerbloggle means. The standard is no longer
very useful, one has instead to have informal market oriented
acceptance discussions of whether YOUR idea of kerbloggle
is close enough to the implementors view of kerbloggle.

Remember, the standard is NOT written in english. It is written
in formal english (this was a phrase that Jean Ichbian coined
to try to explain this crucial difference). The fact that Ken
Garlington has some informal idea of what documentation means
has nothing whatsoever to do with this word as used in the
standard. The standard has to define all terms that it uses,
just as a mathematician has to in writing a proof.

Could one come up with a definition of documentation that was
not over-restrictive? I very much doubt it.

> However, that's not related AT ALL to the original question
> I've raised, which I think you've answered completely. Thank
> you for your time.

Sorry, at this stage, I really don't know what question you
are raising :-)


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