Report from Redmond

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-27 14:14:46

The C++ committee has been meeting all week in Redmond, Washington, at the 
Microsoft conference facility.  A productive meeting, both from the 
committee's standpoint and from the standpoint of Boost. The committee 
continued processing defect reports, intensified discussions of the future 
evolution of C++, and began considering new library features for the 
Library Technical Report (which will eventually result in additions to the 
next standard.)  Several Boosters attended the committee meetings for the 
first time, and were able to contribute nicely to the process.

The work of the Boost group has generated a great deal of respect from the 
committee members.  Many of the compiler vendors are starting to include 
the Boost libraries in their testing.  Bill Kempf's presentation on 
Boost.Threads to the Library Working Group (LWG) was right on target and 
was very well received.  Boost's proposals for new standard library 
features for the TR faired well in general.

This is the first meeting that the LWG has actually consider library 
extension proposals, so it is still groping for the exact criteria to be 
used to determine if a proposal is within the scope of the TR.  A major 
criteria seems to be just how many people will find the proposed addition 
useful.  Something perceived to be widely useful to many people, assuming 
it meets the other criteria, is obviously of interest.  Libraries useful to 
some users, but maybe not a huge number of users, will have to present some 
compelling justification.

Over the next few days, I'll try to post a brief description of the 
reaction to each of the Boost libraries presented to the LWG.

--Beman