On Nov 24, 2004, at 12:06 PM, Van Snyder wrote:

> Of course, it was an extension.  Being so, X3J3 never standardized it,
> perhaps because of the resistance to standardizing existing practice.

That hyperbole seems a bit, harsh.  Close to the point of being flame
bait.

In well over a decade on J3, I never once heard even a hint of a single
member suggesting that being existing practice was a reason not to
standardize something.  I don't think it was because my ears were
closed.

I have certainly heard plenty of arguments that being existing practice
was not in itself always sufficient reason to standardize something.
But that statement is very different.  In fact, it is opposite in sign.
One statement argues that existing practice is a negative. The other
acknowledges it as a positive, but not necessarily sufficiently
positive to outweigh other negatives.  There are always negatives to
every proposal. If nothing else, every proposal requires dome work,
which is a negative. Might not be a big negative, and how big is often
debatable, but the sign is obvious enough.

Sometimes the positive of existing practice has been strong enough to
overcome substantial negatives.  For example, to my knowledge, existing
practice is the main reason that the bit intrinsics look quite like
they do. I seriously doubt that they would have had quite the same
syntax if it were not for the weight of existing practice.

There have been cases where multiple existing practices were
inconsistent on details. In several such cases, the standard did avoid
conflicting with either of the old ones. But that is done specifically
to *SUPPORT* existing practice by continuing to allow it as an
alternative extension form, rather than by dictating one choice that
would invalidate existing codes using one of the incompatible existing
practices. I've been involved in a few of those.  (Command-line
arguments come to mind).

Of course I've seen a lot of proposals to standardize some existing
feature from some compiler.  Many of those proposals got rejected.
Many proposals of all kinds get rejected (there being orders of
magnitude more proposals than are practical to do, and some proposals
directly conflicting with others).  But never once has the fact that it
was existing practice been even hinted at as a reason for rejection.
Yes, I'm including internal committee discussions, and even private
ones over dinner, so no, I don't buy any theory that involves that as
being the real reason behind the scene.

But all in all, what I've seen most of along these lines is people
whose proposals got rejected making up what I can only categorize as
conspiracy theories to explain the rejection. The hypothesized basis of
the conspiracy varies, prejudice against existing practice being one.

--
Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
[log in to unmask]       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
                             |        -- Mark Twain