In short, here are the results of the ISO CD ballot for CD 14882, alias
C++ Standard:

Support Approval: 10
Not Supporting Approval: 6 (France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, UK)
Abstaining: 1 (USA)

Note: The UK comments are 82 pages.

-- Alfred Strohmeier

It would be nice to know which countries approved the CD?
(Especially their importance in the IT world.)

Dirk

--

   OFFIS NV/SA | c/o Eurocontrol - CFMU  |        cfmu.eurocontrol.be
   Ada-Belgium | Raketstraat 96          | Phone: ++32(2)729.97.36
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ISO results:

Support Approval: 10
Not Supporting Approval: 6 (France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, UK)
Abstaining: 1 (USA)

on C++ - GOSH! that's a lot of non-support from the most critical
countries. Seems like the ISO process has gone badly astray for C++.
Quite a contrast with Ada where these votes were unanimous or close
to unanimous approval.

Sounds like there is some smooting out still to be done :-)

|> >Support Approval: 10
|> >Not Supporting Approval: 6 (France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands,
|> >                            Sweden, UK)
|> >Abstaining: 1 (USA)
|>
|> It would be nice to know which countries approved the CD?
|> (Especially their importance in the IT world.)
|>
|> Dirk
|>
|> --

|>    OFFIS NV/SA | c/o Eurocontrol - CFMU  |        cfmu.eurocontrol.be
|>    Ada-Belgium | Raketstraat 96          | Phone: ++32(2)729.97.36
|>    Team Ada    | B-1130 Brussel, Belgium | Fax:   ++32(2)729.90.22

Also, does anyone know where the UK's comments might be obtained?  Would the
comments be ftpable or available on the WWW??

Thanks,

Cheryl

Ben said:

"Undoubtedly their main problem was the controversial decision to use
the confusing term "class" for the OOP construct, versus the
more intuitive term "tagged"  :-)"

Clearly the market-drive argument ("that tagged was preferable because of
greater familiarity with all the Ada 95 programmers out there") just wasn't
strong enough to carry the day :-)

Little piece of history for those who don't know the reference here.
Ada 95 has always used the term tagged, but during the design phase,
several people, notably Jean Ichbiah, suggested switching to the word
class, based on the familiarity argument.

There was actually a lot of sympathy for this idea, and when the DR's
voted on the general idea of replacing tagged by class, the ayes got
a clear majority (I forget the vote, it could be looked up, or
remembered by someone else). However, there was no such consensus as
to what the syntax might be.

The issue heated up, and came to a boil at the Salem meeting of
WG9 -- am I remembering the location right? if not, it wuld have
seemed an appropriate venue :-)

Both Tuck (adamantly opposed to class), and Jean (adamantly opposed to
tagged) gave extensive presentations, and then we voted, the vote
was initially 2-2 with most delegations abstaining (probably to be
interpreted as meaning that they thought it was not such an important
issue). The US delegation had in advance agred to join the winning
side, whichever it was, to help settle the matter, and since a tie,
especially with so few votes, was not enough to mandate a change,
the US added a negative vote, and the final vote was 2-3 with a
bunch of abstentions.

So we cam pretty close to writing

  class a is ...

instead of

  type a is tagged ...

but in retrospect, I think the abstainers probably had the right view :-)

I don't know if people want to rediscuss this issue -- you can be sure that
every possible argument stone has been unearthed alread on this particular
issue :-)

Robert Dewar's reaction:

Undoubtedly their main problem was the controversial decision to use
the confusing term "class" for the OOP construct, versus the
more intuitive term "tagged"  :-)

-Ben Brosgol

Here are some facts regarding the ISO CD ballot

The C++ CD vote was 12 for, 6 against. This would allow the
committee to go on to a DIS vote, especially as some of the
`no' votes was based on the assumption that the new rules
for a DIS vote would be in effect.

The old ISO rules allowed disposition of national body
comments attached to CD votes to be done after the DIS vote.
The new rules allow only the correction of spelling mistakes.
However, the committee decided to do further work on the precision
of the standards document aimed at increasing the number of
`yes' votes rather than proceeding to a DIS immediately. The point
of the delay is NOT to add or subtract features from the language
or the library, simply to increase the precision of the description.

--- peter