Boost Report from Tokyo

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-02 10:33:12

Nine people from six countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, UK,
US) discussed boost topics during dinner at a Russian restaurant in
Tokyo, Japan, on 18 April 2000.  The C++ standards committee's
Library Working Group also discussed boost initiatives during its
regular meeting that week.

Several decisions were reached; all will require elaboration in
coming weeks. In summary:

*  Boost is going to host a discussion group on library extensions
for the next C++ standard.  The precedent is the NCEG (Numerical C
Extensions Group) work which eventually flowed into the C standard.
Details to be decided.

*  Boost will host a meeting in Toronto, Canada, tentatively
scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, 22 October, 2000.  The meeting
format will include presented papers and open discussions.  Some form
of boost presence this fall in Europe is also under consideration.

*  Technical discussion of smart pointers centered on a three-level
model, with a very small number of standard library smart pointers at
the center, a somewhat larger but still small number of boost smart
pointers interoperating well with the standard library pointers, and
then a large universe of other smart pointers outside the scope of
boost.  A paper is planned to explain this model.

*  The boost decision making process for moving libraries from the
vault to the web site is to be revisited via discussion on the
mailing list.

--Beman