Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net>]

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See my comments amongst yours :-).

"Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:3F8706CA.7040704@comcast.net...

> It would be nice to have a good proposal and presentation in shape for
> the WG9 meeting in San Diego, and get it on the agenda.  As I have said,
> I think the right approach is to keep the standards related part of this
> small:  An on-line registry of top-level library names.  But notice that
> once you go the standards route, there are potential political issues
> hiding all around.
*** Which makes the deadline which date ?

*** I would think the idea is to keep away from the Ada branch (except if we
want to add basic functionality to any of the standard Ada packages, like
you said, in that case we could let it be known that it exists in our
library but it would be the WG9's role to accept it, reject it, etc etc
since it is under the Ada standard hierarchy.  Ultimately we could have an
Ada top level name that would serve just for that purpose perhaps.  or a
"Standard" branch as to not conflict with the Ada name itself.  But a branch
just for that might be a good idea.

>
> In this case, I think the right approach is to have a registry which for
> all practical purposes is a de facto listing of all the library names
> that are being used.  But the "official" list would have to pass up the
> approval chain through WG9 every so often, and there would have to be
> procedures for dealing with conflicting registrations and so on.  In
> other words, a search of the list would return all known names that
> matched, with probably a one word status: Registered, Pending, Rejected,
> Withdrawn, Unknown, Delisted.

*** Sounds good to me, and since Ada is case insensitive  MyStatsLibrary and
mystatslibrary would be the same and should return a conflict.

>
> If I were doing it I would probably set up a nominal registration fee
> for top level names.  It should be small enough not to pain those who
> are doing the registration to contribute to the community, and
> high-enough so that if a cyber-squatter wants to try it, he can fund the
> whole operation, including the clerical overhead of rejecting most or
> all of his requests. ;-)  Or we could just have a rule about the number
> of top level libraries registered by one person or corporation.

*** I would suggest here that fees depend on the purpose of the submission.
I wouldn't want to charge a fee to a programmer that puts an OpenSource
licence on his submission.  Free Software is Free Software.  But if the aim
of the library or binding etc etc is a commercial one then a fee could be in
order.  and of course should an open source submission's author want to turn
it into a commercial licence then the "fee" would need to apply in this
scenario.

>
> If we work at it, it could be in place and working by the San Diego
> meeting on a provisional basis, then Marin can file a registration
> application for CAL that states the current contents and the rules for
> adding to it.  St�phane can register SAL, ACT can register GNAT, and so
> on.  (If I get a vote on who gets approved, I'm going to look for
> libraries that exist, are well documented, include unit tests, and are
> useful.  So get busy. ;-)

*** And again when's the San Diego meeting?  How much time do we have?
>
> -- 
>                                          Robert I. Eachus

*** I've started work on a possible structure of the "CAL" library (is that
now the official name?) we'll call it that until we know :-).  What we could
do here on the board is perhaps state a list of what sections would be
needed in the documentation to assure that it's clear enough.  I'd suggest
HTML as the file format for those docs so they can be indexed on search
engines so that they are available outside the scope of the library itself.
but that's just a suggestion :-).

-- 
St�phane Richard
"Ada World" Webmaster
http://www.adaworld.com