Re: Ada 2022 Language Reference Manual to be Published by Springer

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

Actually, paragraph numbers weren't allowed back in the Ada 83/Ada 95 days. 
So the original ISO versions didn't have them. You can use them in ISO 
documents now (I don't know when this changed), but you have to get a 
special waiver to do so - for *every* individual standard that you want to 
have them (that's a recent change, for the worse). And if we added them to 
the ISO version (after getting the appropriate waiver -- which I didn't know 
about for this last round of standardization), they'd be different than the 
ones in the RM (because they wouldn't allow versioning or inserted numbers). 
That doesn't seem helpful to me, YMMV.

ISO no longer lets us be compatible with the clause numbering of previous 
versions -- ALL standards have to follow their numbering for initial stuff. 
They've also changed from requiring not using Annexes I and O (since they're 
easily confused with chapters (nope, now sections (nope, now clauses)) -- to 
requiring having Annexes I and O.

Bob Duff explained it best: The people maintaining the "standards for 
standards" have made no attempt to keep upward compatibilty in their work 
(unlike us Ada people). Every standard in existence has to be changed 
substantially with each new edition in order to meet the ever-changing 
requirements. It's hard to believe that these people don't understand (or 
don't care) that these standards are used for a very long time.

                       Randy Brukardt, Project Editor, ISO/IEC 8652

"Keith Thompson" <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:87zg51hlm6.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com...
> dirk@orka.cs.kuleuven.be. (Dirk Craeynest) writes:
> [...]
>> Yes, the introductory chapters in the ISO document are slightly
>> different from those in the RM on ada-auth.org, and there's no Annex on
>> "Obsolescent Features" nor a "Glossary" (that was removed in draft 35
>> anyway).  All this is due to specific requirements that ISO has for its
>> standards.  There are more differences, such as the ISO document not
>> having any paragraph numbers as those are not allowed in ISO standards.
> [...]
>
> Is disallowing paragraph numbers a recent change?  I have a copy of the
> 2011 ISO C standard, ISO/IEC 9899:2011 (E), and it definitely has
> paragraph numbers.  (Which are extremely useful, BTW; it seems silly for
> ISO to disallow them.)
>
> -- 
> Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
> Will write code for food.
> void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */