RE: When will next Ada revision be? (83, 95, ?)

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

In article <mailman.980163387.21417.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>,
  comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Beard, Frank wrote:
> > Where can we go to see a list of the proposed updates to
the language?
>
> Cf. the Ada Futures Casbah Manifesto at:
  ^^
that means "compare", I think you mean QV or VD, but perhaps
it is better to avoid latin phrases which people are likely
to misunderstand anyway and stick to english :-) "See also"
would probably be clearest!
>
>   http://lexis.di.fct.unl.pt/ADaLIB/Ada_Futures/casbah.cgi

This seems to be designed to be as inaccessible as possible
A nasty complicated URL, impossible to remember, and

> Access elements:
>
>   nome  => adaphile
>   senha => :)ot

a password (which really should not be necesary, what on earth
is the point of a password which you post publicly) which is
tricky to read since both colon and right paren can easily be
confused with semicolon and right brace :-)

Also, on finally getting to this, it is very thin containing
two vague ideas not spelled out. I think it would be much more
useful for people to use as a starting point:

1. The enhancement AI's being examined by the ARG

2. Ideas spelled out in early Ada 95 mapping documents that
were rejected. In many cases, these were completely worked out,
and everyone agreed they were in isolation reasonable, but
there was general agreement (perhaps by everyone except the
design team :-) that the proposal had to be simplified so some
perfectly reasonable, very nicely designed features were
omitted. For example, the extended exception design is very
worth while looking at, although it should probably be
reexamined with an eye to interoperation with C++.

Another proposal to look at most certainly is 'Class applied
to non-tagged objects. There were several reasons for rejecting
this including:

 1. It was felt to weaken the typing system too much
 2. It was felt to create confusion wrt tagged types
 3. It would have required major RM rewriting

Historically it was reason 3 that was considered very
significant, but that's ironic, since (against the advice
of some of us :-) the RM was completely rewritten in a
totally different style in any case.

So given that 3 has disappeared as a reason, it is worth
arguing 1 and 2 again.

Perhaps we could even consider the

   class x is ....

proposal again :-)



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