A question about tenative definitions

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <4228 at lupine.NCD.COM> rfg at NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) writes:
>If it *was* the intent of x3j11 to do things in the traditional manner,
>I think that they should have worded 3.7.2  so that that would have been
>more clear.

"Tentative definition" is inherently a kludgy notion.
However, it is irrelevant to the actual issue, which was whether
or not a "relaxed ref/def" model could be used for external linkage
by a conforming implementation.  The answer is, yes, it is permitted,
because programs that exploit this conforming extension do not have
to violate a syntax rule or constraint to do so.  However, such
programs are definitely not strictly conforming programs.