Re: [boost] Formal Review: Concept Checking

From: Jeremy Siek (jsiek_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-20 11:01:42

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Beman Dawes wrote:
> Major issues
> ------------
> 
> *  I think the documentation needs to be reorganized to emphasize use of 
> concept checking and the Boost Concept Checking Library (BCCL) as an 
> everyday tool for template developers.

Good idea :)

> *  Tutorial material, rationale, and reference material are all lumped in 
> the same document.  They should be separated.  The reference material 
> itself covers several different topics - checks, canned concepts, 
> archetypes, etc. - and these might even be separate pages.  The experience 
> BCCL user will just be looking up the exact name of a particular canned 
> concept, for example, and should be able to reach that quickly.

Will do.

> *  More of the examples (or at least the first examples) should be for user 
> applications rather than C++ Standard Library implementations.

Should I use examples from the BGL instead? Or did you have something
else in mind?

> *  Grep for "Standard Template Library", "STL", and "SGI".  Many of these 
> references should really be references to the C++ Standard Library, Matt 
> Austern's book, or ???.  We don't want to ignore the importance of SGI's 
> contributions, but where possible we should reference ISO or public sources 
> rather than a particular Standard Library implementation.  To be blunt, the 
> SGI web site could be gone tomorrow, too.  (But I don't know what to do 
> about links to the SGI site for individual concepts. Ideas?)

The SGI html pages have a very free copyright, so I think we could copy
them, and mirror on the boost site. Also, I've been talking with Matt
about redoing the SGI docs using XML, which can be used to generate html,
etc.

> *  Should BOOST_REQUIRE (currently REQUIRE) et. al. be renamed 
> BOOST_FUNCTION_REQUIRES?

Great idea, will do.

> *  The concept names are easy to confuse with template parameter names:
>     How about appending Concept to the visible concept names:

I like this suggestion too. As my english teacher use to say, "explicit
is terrific!"

> *  The Reference documentation is way under-specified, IMO.  It should be 
> possible to read it without plowing through the discussion.  (Although it 
> should be complete, it can be very terse, essentially written in 
> standardese.)

Ok, will work on this.

> Minor issues
> ------------

Will fix...

> Non-issues
> ----------
> 
> *  The use of macros seems justified.  Maybe eventually someone will see a 
> pattern to all our compile time (or instantiation time) macro uses and 
> propose a language feature that will subsume them.

Will dream... :)

Cheers,

Jeremy

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jeremy Siek                        www: http://www.lsc.nd.edu/~jsiek/
 Ph.D. Candidate                  email: jsiek_at_[hidden]
 Univ. of Notre Dame         work phone: [phone]
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