Re: Include language bindings? Re: Draft Standard Text, V02.1
P1788, Dan
On 15 Mar 2010, at 16:34, Dan Zuras Intervals wrote:
>> That's a good question.
>>
>> Looking at IEEE 754-1985, one sees that it was a decade or more
>> after the hardware standard was in use before there were language
>> bindings. Can including language bindings help the process?
>
> Emphatically yes.
>
> It was more than 2 decades that 754 lived without
> standard language bindings & during that time a lot
> of compilers found 'imaginative' ways to interpret
> the meaning of the seemingly most obvious things,
> like '+' & '*'.
>
> Some of those interpretations were just 'different'.
>
> Some were flat out wrong...
Dan has long argued this point, and I am persuaded by him. We need language bindings. This is what the P1788 Subgroup "Expression Rearrangement" is really about. Can it wake from sleep and address this please?
This is tricky, because by the nature of language bindings I think we, acting alone, can't create normative text on this. Or would be unwise to do so. That can only be done in collaboration with a relevant language standardization committee. If my health is spared to me I intend to join the Fortran committee when our work is near completion.
But if we produce a P1788 clause of _recommendations_ on this topic, they will carry a lot of weight. We should then be ready to revise it a year or two or three later in the light of experience in language committees.
Regards
John