New US Rep to ISO C

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <4623 at freja.diku.dk> keld at freja.diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) writes:
>Some comments: I have only seen one real technical reply to the
>Danish proposal, and that was the response from the third public
>review on the ANSI draft (p 71).

I don't think that should be dismissed lightly.  The proposal was
thoroughly discussed by X3J11 as part of the third public review,
and similar proposals had been discussed previously.  The response
document on p. 71 spells out X3J11's reasoning in considerable
detail.  If there is a flaw in the logic, it should be pointed
out.  I missed most of the debate on this in Seattle due to having
to be in two places at once, but nobody has pointed out to me any
error in our previous reasoning.

>Else I have only seen remarks like "Do we want to discuss the
>alternate trigraphs issue: straw vote: 40 no, 0 yes".

You weren't present for previous discussions, but I was, and they
did occupy a significant amount of X3J11 committee time.  If the
official minutes don't reflect that, then they're misleading.
However, upon looking up the description in the minutes (document
number X3J11/88-155, pp. 5-6) I see considerable evidence of the
discussion, including specific points raised by Plum and Gwyn,
who were by no means the only participants in the discussion.
As to "straw vote" etc., here is a direct quote from 88-155,
just after several paragraphs summarizing the digraph discussion:

	To avoid any bias against making the first substantive
	change, Brodie suggested that the Committee defer a
	full vote until all substantive issues had been aired.
	There was no objection.

	Straw vote:
		 0 accept digraphs a la 88-134
		40 no

Our procedure, which was also followed in other X3J11 meetings,
was to form a "committee of the whole" for discussion of issues
and to take non-binding votes on issues in order to determine the
sense of the committee.  We termed these "straw votes" since they
were basically just polls to discover whether there was strong
support for each proposed change to the Draft Standard.  Near the
end of the meeting, we then resumed "full committee deliberations"
and ratified the decisions indicated by the earlier straw votes.
This procedure seemed necessary to avoid continual arguments about
whether each change was substantive or editorial, as well as to
assure that the issues were considered on their merits instead of
merely as threats to timely standardization (although that too was
a valid concern).

Thus, the label "straw vote" is not an indication of the amount
of serious consideration given to an issue.  X3J11 treated your
proposal quite seriously, but in the end did not think that it
should be adopted.

>Also it has never been treated by X3J11 as a request from ISO WG14,

That is simply false.  From the same minutes:

	Plauger presented several papers (88-132, 88-134, 88-108)
	concerning issues of international concern.  He identified
	as most critical the request from WG14, on behalf of
	Denmark, to add more readable digraphs to the Standard.

	...  Plauger reminded the Committee that Denmark felt
	sufficiently strongly about this capability that they
	were willing to press for an ISO standard that differs
	from ANSI, if X3J11 doesn't adopt it.

>X3J11 not only has the responsibility of ANSI to do the standard,
>but also have the technical responsibility of the ISO standard.

Yes, that's true.  Technical responsibility means, among other
things, judging the technical merits of proposals.  X3J11 has
many times adopted changes to the Draft Standard that remedied
perceived technical deficiencies.  I believe that X3J11 did not
think that the digraph proposal was a suitable remedy for a
perceived technical deficiency.  The official response document
explained the Committee position on this issue.

>The technical problems with the proposal seems to be solvable,

Very likely they are.  However, in order to work on fixing the
problems in the proposal X3J11 would first have to be convinced
of the necessity for making any change at all in this area.
Clearly, they have not been convinced that there is a necessity.

>Another thing that X3J11 let down was to follow the guidelines
>for syncronisation of ANSI/ISO standardisation, which has been
>proposed by ANSI itself and to the best of my knowledge been
>approved by ISO SC22. The guidelines would mean that the ANSI C
>standard would be delayed till ISO had got a DP successfully
>thru the international ballot.

>From what you have presented about this "synchronization", I
gather that it is up to ANSI to decide whether to delay
ratification of the proposed Standard until ISO etc.  X3J11 does
not control ANSI, nor does ANSI control X3J11.  So far as the
X3J11 Technical Committee is concerned, our job was to prepare
the proposed Draft Standard, and after evaluating public comments
to submit a final revision to CBEMA X3 for a ballot, which is
what we did.  ANSI can delay ratification of the X3-approved
proposed Standard, and may even require further work to resolve
ISO differences if necessary.  Since WG14 voted explicitly to
adopt the same draft for the ISO standard, there should be no
such differences.

>To me it seems like non-US input have had a very hard time getting
>thru X3J11.

If this is true, it must be due to problems in the "official
channels" of communication, which are not under X3J11's control.
X3J11 has considered numerous letters from outside the USA:
Canada, Japan, and the UK come immediately to mind, but
suggestions from other countries were also received.  Every
suggestion received by X3J11, even those not officially
submitted as part of the public review process, was considered,
and several of them resulted in improvements to the proposed
Standard.  I know this because I edited the X3J11 responses to
all the suggestions as published in our four response documents
(you haven't seen the fourth one yet, it's our response to the
letter from Hansberry).

>Bill Plaugers multibyte support got thru, but this was
>also written by one of the most prominent members of X3J11, ...

Bill is certainly one of X3J11's prominent members, but the
committee frequently decided against his position on issues.
Decisions were almost always made primarily on technical
grounds, although I think there were a few minor exceptions.
Although it helped to have an advocate on the committee, many
suggestions were adopted because of persuasive arguments, not
because some prominent committee member pushed for adoption.

It happens that I was author of the major alternative proposal
to multibyte characters, namely the "short char" proposal.
(The Japanese had suggested a similar "long char" solution,
but mine did not require additional library routines.)  I felt
about the fate of my proposal much as you must feel about the
fate of yours.  I too think that my proposal should have been
adopted by the Committee, but they were not convinced.  There
has to be room for "reasonable people to disagree" on these
issues.  So long as my proposal was given a fair hearing, which
I believe was the case, I simply have to accept the decision.

>Neither the British nor the Danish proposals have got a fair
>treatment by X3J11, in my humble opinion.

The British "undefined behavior" proposal was accepted in
principle, with details to be worked out early during the future
"interpretations" phase of X3J11.  It was agreed that their
concerns were not sufficient to further delay adoption of the
proposed Standard as it now stands (they did not involve
technical errors); the British WG14 representative indicated
that this was acceptable to him, and WG14 so voted in Seattle.

I'm sorry that you don't feel the digraph proposal received a
fair hearing, but my experience (having been involved in the
debate as well as in the formulation of the official response)
suggests that it did receive a fair hearing, but simply was
not adopted because the Committee did not agree with it.  I'm
sure it must seem to you that no reasonable person could
possibly disagree with your reasoning if they would only give
it fair consideration, but I'm telling you that that's exactly
what happened, just as it happened with my short-char proposal.


DISCLAIMER:  The above is all my personal opinion and should
not be construed as an official statement from X3J11.  I hope
I have shed more light than heat upon the subject.