Re: Ada Common Environment (ACE)

[Bob Mathis <73313.2671@COMPUSERVE.COM>]

Bob Leif suggested:

>This sounds very good.  I believe that ACE will be very useful. However, it
>still would make sense to be able to formally include ACE, ASIS, and other
>standards in Ada as Annexes in less than 11 or so years before the next
>language revision.   I believe that your and others' excellent standards
>creation activities are a very good argument for making Ada a multivolume
>ISO standard. This will provide the flexibility to add Annexes, as needed,
>and in addition will add the capacity to react in a timely manner to
>unforseen problems, such as the call-back problem Ada 83 had with both
>Microsoft and X windows.

The Ada industry wants to respond in a timely manner and that's what ACE
is about. Making this part of the ISO standard is a different issue. Over
the 14 years I've been involved with ISO, their approach to interpreting,
adding to, or changing standards has been evolving. I think there will be
even larger changes in the next couple of years.

Bob has made his suggestion about annexes before and the WG9 group is
aware of it. ASIS is a separate work item which would normally mean a
separate standard, but not necessarily. In this case, determining how it
is to be published should be considered as it comes nearer to approval.

-- Bob Mathis
Executive Director, Ada Resource Association
Convener, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 WG9 Ada