[ANSI-Smalltalk] Consense driven standard...

[Bruce Badger]

Danny,

I expect that a given version of the standard will a single document.
The internal structure of that document would reflect the subjects
covered by the standard.

There will be a relatively small number of people who can cast formal
votes.  These will be the members of INCITS.   Having said that I
would like each ballot to be open to everyone who is interested.  The
counting of votes would show us two things: a) the popular vote
(derived from all votes) b) the formal vote (derived from those who
voted *and* were INCITS members).  One would hope that the popular and
formal tallies would match, but the formal vote will always be the one
that counts in the end (perhaps thereby avoiding the problems that you
say the OMG experienced).

As for what things get into the standard, well that would be subject
to a vote too :-)  What I would expect (and hope) to see are the
things which are seen to be common over time.  Perhaps in 1975 sockets
were not something you would expect to be part of a standard class
library but today I most certainly would.  Today I would not expect a
version control system or a GUI library to be a part of the standard,
but I *would* like such libraries to be implemented *in terms of* the
standard so I could run them in any conforming Smalltalk environment.
Perhaps in 20 years time version control and GUI libraries will become
uniform too.  Only time will tell.

All the best,
    Bruce
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