[std-interval] Portland standardization meeting feedback
Steve Clamage
Stephen.Clamage at Sun.COM
Sat Oct 21 09:13:51 PDT 2006
A minor correction: A new version of the standard has a longer approval
cycle than a TR, and during the approval cycle, work on TRs can
continue. It is possible for TR2 to be available around the same time as
the new standard.
---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage at sun.com
Sylvain Pion wrote:
> Dear std-intervallers,
>
> Here are some news from the discussions that just took place at the ISO
> C++ (WG21) meeting in Portland, concerning the interval and bool_set
> proposals.
>
> The proposals have been discussed by the Library Working Group.
> The discussions have not entered much details, because the committee
> is very busy, and almost nobody had looked at the details before the
> presentation.
>
> The LWG nevertheless ran the following 3 straw polls, which results
> are still positive for us. I guess a more formal vote for inclusion
> in TR2 will take place at one of the next meetings. ( TR2 itself will
> probably take a few years to be closed, as work on C++0x has higher
> priority. )
>
> ++ + - --
> Interest in bool_set : 3 5 0 0
> bool_set for C++0x (vs TR2) : 0 1 2 4
> Interest in interval for TR2 : 2 5 2 1
>
> So both proposals are still supported, targetting TR2 rather than
> C++0x. We're still on track!
>
> [ Notes :
> - C++0x is the code-name for the next standard
> (hopefully published in 2009),
> - TR2 is the name for a technical report which is non-normative,
> but published, and which compiler vendors try to follow. It serves
> as a place to expose the proposals on a large public scale.
> For example, Boost has an almost complete implementation of TR1,
> and GCC and Dinkumware as well (the standard lib of Visual C++).
> ]
>
>
> The only reason raised by those against the proposal is the
> implementation difficulty. One of them would be OK if there was
> some non "open-source" (in the sense of "lawyer-frightening")
> code available that he could base his code on.
> I told him I hoped that IEEE754r will hopefully imply that such
> code will be made available at some point through the libC...
>
> Boost people would appreciate if a default implementation would be
> made available. So, one question : is there any volunteer here
> to do that ? Something based on MPFR or CRLIBM or any other open
> source code would do it, as long as it follows the specification,
> and has the Boost License. It's pretty important to get support
> from them. It does not have to be top-efficient nor top-precise,
> but it has to exist and match the specs.
>
>
> I did not get much technical questions, only minor things :
> - the I/O specification as we did it is the right thing for now,
> but breaks the ABI (it adds a virtual function to a class).
> It is a general problem, and this most probably means it will
> be solved by others, and we will just have to follow.
> - some remarks have been raised for the choice of free functions
> versus member functions (by Jeff Garland). But after discussion,
> I think I convinced him that we do something reasonnable.
> - bool_set should most probably not offer the && and || operators.
>
> I'm sure we'll get more questions once people seriously look at
> the specifications, but it may not come soon.
>
> I guess that the next task for us is to issue revisions of the
> proposals, and then ask for a formal vote for inclusion in the
> TR2 working draft.
>
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