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Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 14:36:24 +1100 (EST) From: cmingins@insect.sd.monash.edu.au (Christine Mingins) Subject: Requests for Proposals To: NICE-ESG-Libs@atlanta.twr.com Current discussions in the committee fall into 3 categories (in priority order): 1. Outstanding issues with ELS95. 2. Suggestions for changes to ELS95 to be incorporated into ELS96. 3. Discussion about Donated Libraries and the role that NICE and this committee should play in sponsoring and promoting them. As we now have a published standard, any changes to the document should be discussed and voted on, even if they appear to be relatively minor (matters of style, typos etc.,). A "clean-up" of the document in this regard should be straightforward. 1. Outstanding issues with ELS95 --------------------------------- There are some aspects of ELS95 - for example exponentiation, COMPARABLE equality - which are still not resolved to everyone's satisfaction. That is, PELKS-8 does not reflect accurately the agreement between the compiler vendors prior to the standard being announced. Action ------ I am now calling for propsals for amendments to ELS95, to bring it in line with the proposer's understanding of what the agreed standard was. These proposals should be in the usual format. Proposals for Clean-up Changes to ELS95 --------------------------------------- Would someone please propose a set of changes which will correct obvious typographical errors, and inconsistencies? If any suggestions which cause controversy can be removed for further discussion. -------------------------------------- 2. Suggestions for changes to ELS95 to be incorporated into ELS96. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I suggest that we proceed in the following manner: Proposals are called for amendments to ARRAY. Changes to the specification of ARRAY have been presented to the committee by Jim McKim for the following reason (in his words): "..I expect that having clear specifications of the features as they are now should help foster discussions along the lines of, "Is this what we really want?" The other core groups which have not been reviewed in detail are: CHARACTER, BIT_N, BOOLEAN NUMERIC, INTEGER, REAL, DOUBLE STRING I am therefore opening CHARACTER, BIT-N and BOOLEAN up for discussion as a precursor to calling for proposals. ---------------------------------------------------- 3. Donated Libraries -------------------- Paul Johnson (#296) said: > I'm not sure exactly what status these libraries will have: I don't > think they should be considered a NICE standard unless they have been > voted as such. OTOH what else would NICE do with them? FTP sites are > already taken care of. I agree with Frieder that sponsorship of libraries is helping promote Eiffel, and is something positive NICE could do. 'Sponsorship' does not mean accepting them as a standard. The main issue here is level of service provided by NICE in sponsoring these libraries. At the very least, as Frieder suggests, a library should conform to some criteria; they should be ELS-conformant, and also meet minumum style and presentation guidelines. Guaranteeing that they actually work is a bit more problematical. If NICE had a web page - (it should have one - any volunteers?!) then advertising and accessing these libraries would be straightforward. The libraries could remain at the donor site, its accepted catalog address datestamped. I think the general idea is a good one. Does anyone disagree? Any suggestions on how we would go about implementing the ideas? ---------------------------------------- -- Christine
