Re: Ada UK web pages

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Brian says

<<What exactly is the 'legal standard' of Ada?  AFAIK it is just a fact
of getting a compiler approved.  There is no restriction on a vendor
producing a non-compliant compiler as long as he doesn't say it is.

That is semantics and squirming out of the issue to which you haven't
addressed.  One of the strengths of Ada is its portability.  The use
of FRAMES on the Ada UK site is a very non-portable construct.  So it
smacks of 'do as I say not as I do'.>>

There are at least two legal standards for Ada, the ANSI standard and
the ISO standard, and these have special legal standing in a number of
situations, e.g. in the preference rules for DoD technologies.

There is a big difference between legal standards of this type, and the
informal use of the word standard in the way you used it in connection
with the Web. I have no interest in what the Ada UK site does, and regad
that particular issue as a tempest in a teapot, but I do think the
distinction between the two meanings of the word "standard" is important.