[boost] Re: compile-time binary constants

From: Gennaro Prota (gennaro_prota_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-01-20 07:31:50

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003 20:50:02 -0500, Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

>If you have a reasonable, useful, proposal then don't worry about getting 
>it presented to the committee. Sure, it helps to be there in person, but 
>there are plenty of existence proof's that attendance isn't a requirement.

Thanks for the clear information. I have to say, then, that we should
acknowledge some communication problem between the committee and the
"public": though I'm one that tries to keep abreast of the committee
work and follow the main C++ newsgroups I can't sometimes do without
thinking that the criteria used to reject/approve some proposal are
inexplicable. Just to give you some examples, introduction of "new
features" (i.e. things that are not established practice) is usually
not even considered; this is because the purpose of standardization
should not be to "invent" but, exactly, to "standardize"; now who
implemented "export" before standardization? What about exception
specifications? What about Koenig lookup (and "extended" Koenig
lookup)? Also think e.g. to B. Stroustrup's recent articles in CUJ,
where he proposes, among other things, to introduce a new wchar
keyword and to allow implicit void* -> pointer-to-object conversion.
Call me mischievous, but would such ideas have been taken into serious
consideration if they didn't came from a person of the calibre and
authority of Bjarne Stroustrup?. The impression we get, from this
other side of the "fence", is that a lot of "criteria" used for
acceptance (is useful, is implemented by some major compiler, doesn't
break backward compatibility, etc.) are often just used as excuses to
reject proposal on an opinion basis. I'm not saying this is the truth,
but this is definitely the impression I get from outside. If this just
a communication problem as I said, then something should be done I
think, because the situation is discouraging for people who want to
propose new ideas.

Genny.