Re: 10-year Ada Language Standard Revision Cycle

[eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <8412@hubcap.clemson.edu> wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe) writes:

 >  I had heard at the Ada 9X discussion at the Eighth Annual National
 >  Conference on Ada Technology that the next revision would take place
 >  in TEN years due to 10 years being the standard ISO revision cycle... 
 >  are there any knowledgeable people who could comment?
 >   (If a five-year cycle is indeed in accordance with the internationally
 >    accepted and agreed-upon norm, I strongly believe that Ada should be 
 >    on a five-year revision cycle and *NOT* a ten-year revision cycle..)

 >    Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu

    The rule in both the ANSI and ISO communities is that a decision
to affirm, revise, or abandon has to be made five years after a
standard is adopted, and that a standard which has been neither
affirmed or superceded within ten years lapses.

    In 1988 (five years after the 1983 Ada ANSI standardization) the
Ada Board recommended that a new standard be developed.  This Ada 9X
process recommendation was very close to what has developed and was
about 30 pages in final form...quite a detailed recommendation.

     The ISO Ada standard was adopted in 1987 (a pointer to the ANSI
and French standards), so it is not due for review unitl 1992, and
will not lapse until 1997.  Since the ISO standard technically
supercedes the ANSI standard in this country, the real lapse date is
1997, but I hope we have at least a proposed new ANSI standard before
1993, and an adopted standard well before 1997.  In fact we could be
starting on the next revsion by then.  (Sigh...)

     My current guess (not my preferences, just a guess as to what
will happen) is that the first revision will be a very minor one, with
the largest changes being things like replacing ASCII with Latin-1,
allowing literals from other character sets, unsigned types (but not
as predefined integer types), dynamic prioities, and better support
for entry families.  The following revison can deal with evolution.

     There may be some extensions to make OOP easier, but don't expect
much in the way of changes.  Just the ability to do what you can do
already in a much more elegant way.  (Which is a lot.  The only major
feature not directly supported in Ada is multiple inheritance, and
overload resolution makes that a big can of worms.)

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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