* New Ada Standard @ 2007-04-02 15:21 Jeffrey D. Cherry 2007-04-02 16:15 ` Jeffrey R. Carter 2007-04-03 10:14 ` Stephen Leake 0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Jeffrey D. Cherry @ 2007-04-02 15:21 UTC (permalink / raw) I see that ISO and ANSI have a new listing for Ada, specifically: ISO/IEC 8652/Amd1:2007 Information technology - Programming languages - Ada - Amendment 1 I haven't purchased this document, yet. I just wanted to confirm that this is the new Ada05 standard that we've been waiting for. If it is, then should I be calling this the Ada07 standard? Also, will there be a reduced price version in the near future? (It is currently listed as US $238 from ANSI for a 1.44MB PDF file.) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-02 15:21 New Ada Standard Jeffrey D. Cherry @ 2007-04-02 16:15 ` Jeffrey R. Carter 2007-04-03 0:01 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-04-03 10:14 ` Stephen Leake 1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-04-02 16:15 UTC (permalink / raw) Jeffrey D. Cherry wrote: > > I haven't purchased this document, yet. I just wanted to confirm that this > is the new Ada05 standard that we've been waiting for. If it is, then should > I be calling this the Ada07 standard? Also, will there be a reduced price > version in the near future? (It is currently listed as US $238 from ANSI for > a 1.44MB PDF file.) Some people are calling this Ada 2005. Some are calling it Ada 2007. Some are calling it Ada 07. Mostly, though, I think we'll just call it Ada. I believe you can find the same text at http://www.adaic.org/standards/ada05.html for somewhat less than $238. -- Jeff Carter "Monsieur Arthur King, who has the brain of a duck, you know." Monty Python & the Holy Grail 09 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-02 16:15 ` Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-04-03 0:01 ` Randy Brukardt 0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2007-04-03 0:01 UTC (permalink / raw) "Jeffrey R. Carter" <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:C_9Qh.26450$oV.6870@attbi_s21... > Jeffrey D. Cherry wrote: > > > > I haven't purchased this document, yet. I just wanted to confirm that this > > is the new Ada05 standard that we've been waiting for. If it is, then should > > I be calling this the Ada07 standard? Also, will there be a reduced price > > version in the near future? (It is currently listed as US $238 from ANSI for > > a 1.44MB PDF file.) > > Some people are calling this Ada 2005. Some are calling it Ada 2007. > Some are calling it Ada 07. Mostly, though, I think we'll just call it Ada. > > I believe you can find the same text at > > http://www.adaic.org/standards/ada05.html > > for somewhat less than $238. It should be noted that the ISO version is the Amendment itself, which is a list of changes to the Ada 95 standard. It's not very easy to use. It makes much more sense to use one of the consolidated versions; you can get those from the above site; and you can get printed versions from Springer; see http://www.adaic.org/standards/articles/lrm.html. Randy Brukardt ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-02 15:21 New Ada Standard Jeffrey D. Cherry 2007-04-02 16:15 ` Jeffrey R. Carter @ 2007-04-03 10:14 ` Stephen Leake 2007-04-03 23:37 ` Randy Brukardt 1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 2007-04-03 10:14 UTC (permalink / raw) "Jeffrey D. Cherry" <ffej.yrrehc@stepbfav.moc> writes: > ... If it is, then should I be calling this the Ada07 standard? The ISO working group on Ada agreed that the common vernacular for the 2007 version should be Ada 2005. See the post in this newsgroup recently (I searched for Ada05 in comp.lang.ada at http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en): http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/11c630572e59f461/f1cf1036a71fca56?lnk=st&q=&rnum=3&hl=en#f1cf1036a71fca56 The rationale for this choice is that a lot of people have been calling it Ada 2005 for a while, and there's no real harm in continuing. The GNAT compiler has an option -ada05, for example, which is not going to change to -ada07. -- -- Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-03 10:14 ` Stephen Leake @ 2007-04-03 23:37 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-04-04 11:56 ` brian.b.mcguinness 0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2007-04-03 23:37 UTC (permalink / raw) "Stephen Leake" <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> wrote in message news:uzm5pahon.fsf@stephe-leake.org... > "Jeffrey D. Cherry" <ffej.yrrehc@stepbfav.moc> writes: > > > ... If it is, then should I be calling this the Ada07 standard? > > The ISO working group on Ada agreed that the common vernacular for the > 2007 version should be Ada 2005. See the post in this newsgroup > recently (I searched for Ada05 in comp.lang.ada at > http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en): This is not an accurate summary of the WG 9 action. The WG 9 vote was intended to apply to the name during the development period (that is, up to standardization). After that, of course, the name of the language is Ada. > The rationale for this choice is that a lot of people have been > calling it Ada 2005 for a while, and there's no real harm in > continuing. The GNAT compiler has an option -ada05, for example, which > is not going to change to -ada07. The only rationale was that we were hopelessly deadlocked on the issue. But there had to be some resolution (in that *something* had to go into the documents), and the people who were against using "Ada 2005" did not feel as strongly as some of those who wanted to stick with it. And in any case, the decision made there is not binding on anyone for purposes other than official WG 9 purposes (and even there, it should be avoided in favor of more precise identification of standards). There are a lot of good arguments for changing the name now as was done with Ada 95 (especially that older articles which reference obsolete drafts of the language would not confuse readers with misinformation); there are also good arguments for staying the course (it doesn't make sense to dilute Ada's marketing). In any case, the best choice is to call it "Ada"; it's now the standard and should be the default on new compilers (it certainly will be on Janus/Ada). If you need to reference the standard itself, that is "Amendment 1" (there is no standard document that includes the complete language; you have to merge three of them to get that, or use Ada Europe's consolidated standard - which isn't official anyway). You might need year numbers to talk about obsolete Ada versions like Ada 95, but not about the current one. Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-03 23:37 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2007-04-04 11:56 ` brian.b.mcguinness 2007-04-04 22:44 ` Randy Brukardt 0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: brian.b.mcguinness @ 2007-04-04 11:56 UTC (permalink / raw) On Apr 3, 7:37 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <r...@rrsoftware.com> wrote: > In any case, the best choice is to call it "Ada"; it's now the standard and > should be the default on new compilers (it certainly will be on Janus/Ada). > If you need to reference the standard itself, that is "Amendment 1" (there > is no standard document that includes the complete language; you have to > merge three of them to get that, or use Ada Europe's consolidated standard - > which isn't official anyway). You might need year numbers to talk about > obsolete Ada versions like Ada 95, but not about the current one. > > Randy. To me, the term "Ada" could refer to any version of the language. It is sometimes necessary to make it clear that you are referring to the most recent version of the language, and a term such as "Ada 2005" is a convenient way of doing so. For example, if someone wanted to inquire whether a certain compiler supported all of the latest language features, he might ask whether that compiler supported the full Ada 2005 standard. --- Brian ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: New Ada Standard 2007-04-04 11:56 ` brian.b.mcguinness @ 2007-04-04 22:44 ` Randy Brukardt 0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2007-04-04 22:44 UTC (permalink / raw) <brian.b.mcguinness@lmco.com> wrote in message news:1175687797.356962.209890@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... > On Apr 3, 7:37 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <r...@rrsoftware.com> wrote: > > > In any case, the best choice is to call it "Ada"; it's now the standard and > > should be the default on new compilers (it certainly will be on Janus/Ada). > > If you need to reference the standard itself, that is "Amendment 1" (there > > is no standard document that includes the complete language; you have to > > merge three of them to get that, or use Ada Europe's consolidated standard - > > which isn't official anyway). You might need year numbers to talk about > > obsolete Ada versions like Ada 95, but not about the current one. > > > > To me, the term "Ada" could refer to any version of the language. It is > sometimes necessary to make it clear that you are referring to the most > recent version of the language, and a term such as "Ada 2005" is a > convenient way of doing so. True enough, but you can only use that informally... > For example, if someone wanted to inquire whether a certain compiler > supported all of the latest language features, he might ask whether > that compiler supported the full Ada 2005 standard. ...and by using the word "standard", you've left the realm of informal. Indeed, there is no such thing as "the full Ada 2005 standard", and there never will be (even ignoring the year number issue). The current Ada standard is made up of three ISO/IEC published documents: The International Standard "Programming Languages - Ada" (ISO/IEC 8652:1995); Technical Corrigendum 1 (ISO/IEC 8652:1995/COR.1:2001); and Amendment 1 (ISO/IEC 8652:1995/AMD.1:2007). Note that only the first is even called "International Standard". The others aren't "Standards" (even though they're standardized, and go through similar approval processes as a standard). There is no single document that you can reference, two of them aren't Standards (although its probably OK to reference Amendment 1 as a "standard", note the capitalization difference), and none of them are published in 2005. So it's OK to reference "full Ada 2005" as an informal reference to a language; reference the Ada Europe consolidated reference manual (its cover says "Ada 2005 Reference Manual"); [but that is most definitely not a standard!], or reference the specific documents by their publication dates ("the Ada standards as of 2007" or "the 2007 Amendment to Ada"), but it isn't OK to reference "standard" (singular) for Ada anymore, nor is it OK to reference the standards documents by years other than those they are published in. The possibility of confusion between "standard" and "Standard" is so severe that think it is best to avoid the word altogether. Admittedly, Ada users have a long history of being confused about what is a standard and what is not (the RM you have on your desk or in your computer is almost certainly not a standard, no matter which version of Ada you are using, it just contains text fairly similar to that in the Standard [and other documents]). If it was up to me, I call it Ada 2007, as that doesn't lead to a confusion between the standards and the other documents. But even that isn't ideal for a number of reasons. But we're now in a situation that any name that you use will be either misleading or wrong in some contexts or will be loudly criticized by various self-appointed critics. I don't want to go there, so I don't put any year number behind Ada unless I'm specifically talking about old, obsolete versions. In any case, "Ada" officially means the most recent set of standards; older standards are "canceled and replaced". Using "Ada" when you mean only "Ada 83" is just plain wrong and is far too common (especially amongst those who only used Ada in the 1980's). I understand the ambiguity problem, but I prefer an combination of education (to get writers out of their bad habits) and direct references to the actual Amendment document when absolutely necessary. Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2007-04-04 22:44 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2007-04-02 15:21 New Ada Standard Jeffrey D. Cherry 2007-04-02 16:15 ` Jeffrey R. Carter 2007-04-03 0:01 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-04-03 10:14 ` Stephen Leake 2007-04-03 23:37 ` Randy Brukardt 2007-04-04 11:56 ` brian.b.mcguinness 2007-04-04 22:44 ` Randy Brukardt
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