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From: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada 9X features
Date: 12 Sep 94 13:23:47
Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA.
Message-ID: <EACHUS.94Sep12132347@spectre.mitre.org>
References: <940908231244_73672.2025_DHR48-1@CompuServe.COM>
 <34qp9b$jqu@jac.zko.dec.com>
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In-reply-to: brett@i.enet.dec.com's message of 9 SEP 94 18:52:51 EST
Date: 1994-09-12T13:23:47+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


     There is a spectrum of opinion on the size of the revision, and I
find it not at all surprising that implementors tend toward the
conservative end.  Robert Dewar, Ben Brosgol, Dave Emery and I
discussed whether or not the decision to exclude COBOL P format
support from Text_IO.Editing should be reconsidered.  As the author of
the ADAR code to do picture string editing I knew the magnitude of the
change and therefore started out baised against.  (For technical
reasons I won't go into here, we eventually concluded that the
decision to leave it out is correct.  There is--in Ada--a less error
prone way to achieve the same result.)

     As an implementor, I would like the language to be smaller.  As a
user, there are a lot of features that got cut from 9X that I will
miss.  But there has to be a compromise.

     It is in the nature of Ada, and the software engineering goals
that come with the language, that the proper compromise point is one
that will cause implementors pain.  The tradeoff criteria has to be
that if pain for users can be eliminted by causing pain for
implementors, so be it.  However, the level of pain for implementors
has to be survivable.  A possible conclusion from GNAT would be that
it is survivable in Ada 9X...

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...