Re: Ada is getting more popular!

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:48:00 +0200, Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> a  
écrit:
>> Can we get the agreements and compromises that a standard
>> embodies and then have them archived, official, permanently
>> available without paper work being done in a standard place?
>> Shouldn't we, at some point, follow standard procedures to
>> get what a standard is expected to be?
>
> I've got trouble parsing this paragraph.
He said a standard expected to be produced using a standard process. He is  
right, as most of them indeed are : RFC, W3C-REC (Recommendations), ISO,  
ECMA (for a restricted set of the most famous). Note : RFC are not the  
ones I prefer, but are still a valuable source when there is no other else  
(just that there is a lack of consistency in quality from from standard to  
standard with the RFC).

> Anyway, I don't see value in standardization when the resulting
> documents aren't freely available so that programmers have easy access
> to them.
Not freely available, does not implies not accessible : the question rise  
of what an accessible fee is (unfortunately, there is no acceptable answer  
to this) and how else this may be accessible if possible. You may consult  
some at the library of some universities (in many countries, you do not  
even need to be a student for that), as well as buy a paper or numeric  
copy, which is the most guaranteed option. The trouble with the latter, is  
weither or not every interested party can afford this/that one. But that  
is another problem which cannot be solved at this level (otherwise, you  
are just hiding what is indeed a badly big issue).

Further more, most of the most useful standards are freely available any  
way (Ada, M2T, JVM, XML, HTTP, PNG, and so many else), and this is good  
enough to provide a level of equality of rights for knowledge.

> It's not clear to me why standardization needs heavyweight
> processes, either.
Because it needs to be heavily checked for language style (grammatical  
errors, spelling mistakes, good choice of words, good style of each  
sentences) and to be heavily checked for inconsistencies, ambiguities,  
explicitness, exhaustivity. Otherwise, you end up in multiple “personal”  
versions appearing everywhere to solve weakness (none being really fine,  
obviously). How “good” do you feel when you face an unclear standard text  
? (if you've already lived that)

To play its role, a standard needs to be understandable and clear, and  
understandable to as many people as possible.



By the way, “free”, does that really exist ? (another topic, but not the  
place for)


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.