Re: Annex I?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

"Mattias Lindblad" <ml_news@matli.net> writes:

> Thanks for a fast and authoritative answer!

You're welcome.

> > What's IEEE 1003.5?
> 
> "POSIX Ada Language Interfaces- Part 1: Binding for System
> Application Program Interface (API)", i.e. the bindings between
> Ada and POSIX.

Ah, yes.

> > There might have been a preliminary version with an Annex I [...]
> > But if so, nobody should be referring to such a preliminary,
> > unapproved version.
> 
> I agree. The IEEE standard refers to a version of the Ada standard
> issued 15 February 1995. However, the first edition of the IEEE
> standard was issued 1996, so one could guess that they started with
> a preliminary version of the Ada standard while writing the standard
> and didn't notice the change in annex numbering in the final version.

Could be.

I actually printed out the final version of the Ada 95 standard in early
December, 1994.  This is the version that was given to ISO.  It took a
couple-or-few months to get through the ISO beaurocracy.  I'm still a
little bit annoyed that everybody calls it "Ada 95", making it look like
we were 2 years late, when we were actually only one year late.  ;-)

> > The ISO rules also forbid paragraph numbers.
> 
> Isn't it possible to get some kind of exemption from those rules? My C
> and C++ standards (from 1999) both have paragraph numbering, and I
> believe they are bought from ISO. Or maybe those standards are simply
> not standard compliant. (In addition to the paragraph numbering,
> the C standard actually has an "Annex I".)

I don't know.  The last time I read the ISO standard for standards was
in 1994.  It has probably changed since then.  In practise, the real
rule is that you have to do what some guy at ISO tells you.  I tried to
obey the standard for standards, and sent a copy to this guy, who marked
it up in red.  Then I obeyed the red marks, and *that* was good enough.
He was very concerned about the fonts and other details on the title
page and the first few pages, but he obviously didn't read the bulk of
the RM.

I think they allowed *line* numbers, as in numbering every fifth line:
5, 10, 15, 20, or something like that.  But the Ada-style paragraph
numbers are much more aesthetically pleasing.  I think we tried to get
ISO to agree, but they refused.  And the reviewers were very concerned
that the Ada 9X standard have the same look and feel as the Ada 83 one.

I believe the index contains paragraph numbers even in the official ISO
version.  We could get away with that because the index is "informative"
rather than "normative".  I've always found that terminology amusing --
in order to be "normative" one must write incomprehensible
(uninformative) gibberish.  ;-)

You should see the ugly hackery that was necessary to get the paragraph
numbers to look like the Ada 83 ones.  Perl scripts for both
preprocessing the input to Scribe, and postprocessing the output.
Randy has since switched to a completely different system.

- Bob