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I'd like to second Eliot's comments that we need to discuss goals. One
of the characteristics of the present standard is the "spartan" nature.
Personally, I like that. My impression is that leaving out Association
was not an oversight, but a considered decision to support a minimal
implementation (say, subject to extreme size constraints).<br>
<br>
Actually, I'd start with an errata to identify clear errors and typos.<br>
<br>
James<br>
<br>
Eliot Miranda wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:3ac5ce8a0710181620l118b3188ga35de25a5510ca0b@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"><br>
<br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/18/07, <b
class="gmail_sendername">Bruce Badger</b> <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:bwbadger@gmail.com">bwbadger@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">The
next thing we need to do is get the project proposal in so we can<br>
establish the committee under the auspices of INCITS. I've sent in a<br>
few questions to INCITS for example asking about how many people are<br>
needed to sponsor the project. Once I have the basics sorted out I'll<br>
post a draft of the proposal here so we'll have something concrete to<br>
discuss.<br>
<br>
In the meantime we can get cracking, I reckon.<br>
<br>
One think I would like to propose is that we embark on this on the<br>
basis that this will be an on-going process delivering a version of<br>
the standard every 18 months or two years. I think we should time-box<br>
each version and simply leave out things that miss the deadline rather
<br>
than hold up a version because of some thing we can get to an agreed<br>
position on.</blockquote>
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>Agreed; see below. </div>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Then
I think we can start talking about priorities. What should we be<br>
tackling and in what order? My suggestion here is that we take Sport<br>
as a guide since that exists to paper over cracks - and we should aim<br>
to seal up the most obvious cracks first. Specifically I'd suggest
<br>
Association, Sockets and Files as being at the top of the list.</blockquote>
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>I think the priority must be to start at the beginning, and that
means discussing the meta-structure of teh standard before we decide
what is standardised. As I said in c.l.s. recently I think that a
language like Smalltalk needs to have a modular, exstensible and
versioned standard where the core language is broken down into modules
(math, collections, streams, exceptions, dialect divination, et al) and
standardised. Around this are a set of optional modules that may or
may not be provided by implementations depending on their complexity
(full implementations, implementations aimed at embedded deployment,
etc), comprising functionality such as reflection, dynamic code
modification, debugging, etc. These are standardised but optional so
that if an implementation chooses to provide optional behaviour it must
do so in accordance with the standard to be conformant. This avoids
the major flaw of x3j20 of only standardising a small part of Smalltalk
as we know it so as to include all implementations. Because x3j20
only specified a common core it wasn't able to standardise reflective
APIs for compilation etc and hence (IMO) badly missed, standardising
something well short of a typical (and useful) Smalltalk.
</div>
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>If we rush off standardising rather than considering the
structure of the standard I think we'll be in danger of repeating
x3j20's mistake and specify only the core library rather than what
people commonly understand by Smalltalk.
</div>
</div>
<br>
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