Re: Ada 95 is the name

[stt@dsd.camb.inmet.com (Tucker Taft)]

In article <3cho0b$k4f@cliffy.lfwc.lockheed.com>,
Garlington KE <l107353@cliffy.lfwc.lockheed.com> wrote:

>Jean D. Ichbiah (ichbiah@jdi.tiac.net) wrote:
>
>:  There is no such thing as "Ada83/7":  I wrote the manual and you can
>:  read it :  The language published in 1983 is called "Ada".  And now, 
>: as you  read, the new language is called "Ada 95".
>
>I've been curious about this, too. My copy of the draft Ada 95 manual just says
>"Programming Language Ada" on the title page. The Foreword (at least in
>draft 5.0) says, "ISO/IEC 8652 defines the Ada programming language, a
>general-purpose language designed to support the construction of long-lived,
>highly reliable software systems. This International Standard replaces the
>previous version of 1987."
>
>If this is so, shouldn't Ada mean The Latest Ada (at least as of 1995), and
>Ada 95 and Ada 87 be the preferred form when referring to the current version
>and the previous version in the same context?

Yes, "Ada" by itself will eventually come to mean the latest Ada.
But most available "Ada" compilers today handle Ada 83/87, so
it might be confusing to start to presume "Ada" meant Ada 95.
Better to be explicit until we are all using the latest version.

Note that sometimes a new language standard does not replace the old one.
However, in the case of Ada, the new ISO standard replaces the old
one, and similarly for ANSI.  I believe that at least for a while
(perhaps still), "Fortran" meant Fortran 77 and "Fortran 90" was
considered a distinct standard (perhaps only by ANSI?).

>Ken Garlington                  GarlingtonKE@lfwc.lockheed.com
>F-22 Computer Resources         Lockheed Fort Worth Co.

-Tucker Taft   stt@inmet.com
Intermetrics, Inc.