I am quite aware of ISO Pascal.. Though, to be fair it wasn't well
known and the tools for adding 'rfc' style proposals must not have been
great? I've proposed a few new properties to the CSS documents standard,
and you know what? It felt great. They're discussing it now and I can
track it. If it succeeds, it will be implemented. It's things like
that, having a group effort with the documents and the actual 'technical
engineers' work on it. You won't have to worry about big heads and
businesses taking over the document, as it will be an open effort, just
like FPC is. When someone looks at a roadmap, that's the 'output'
people look to and see on what to expect in the future. What we'd be
doing is discussing proposals and such to make Free Pascal a standard.
Who knows? Maybe Delphi would start trying to implement our standards?
Is there any such online software anyone is aware of, that is an
easy 'proposal'/'rfc' style interface? Where you can make suggestions,
comments and votes on each proposal? If there is enough votes on a
particular proposal someone could see the potential and add it without
fear of it not being accepted.
- Dennis Fehr
On 2015-07-19 04:42 PM, Ralf Quint wrote:
On 7/19/2015 2:03 AM, Jonas Maebe wrote:
Den wrote:
Just like ECMAScript,
C++, PHP, most languages now have a 'standards' document behind it.
That's their *roadmap*. Their *leadership*. Design it and the
*community* will show *support*.
ISO Pascal and ISO Extended Pascal were like that in the early 90s:
1) there was an official ISO standard and standards committee for it
2) there were a number commercial compilers supporting it such as HP
Pascal and IBM's compiler for its System/370
3) later on (in 1996) a GCC-based implementation arrived for it (the
equivalent of the LLVM of the moment)
And still almost no one uses ISO/Extended Pascal anymore. Why?
Possibly because the de facto Pascal standards had already become
Think Pascal on the Mac and Turbo Pascal on the PC by then, and none
of those programmers wanted to rewrite all of their code (although
Think Pascal was a bit closer to ISO Pascal). Or maybe because in
general, many people just preferred those language dialects for one
reason or another. In any case, introducing one new standard to rule
them all seldom (if ever) works (and you can bet someone will be
unable to resist to add a link to the related xkcd comic).
Standards do not magically make a language more popular. They only
work if they follow from a desire of an entire community to design
one and to adhere to it. "Design it and the community will show
support" is exactly the opposite of what happens in practice.
ISO Pascal was a born a dead horse. Borland, itself taking pieces of
USCD Pascal (Units, Strings) became the "de-facto"standard and that is
what the initial goal was when Florian started the compiler way back
when. Later, Free Pascal followed what was set by Delphi, making the
most sense.
Now today, I do not necessarily agree with the direction Embarcadero
heading these days with Delphi and most importantly (for me), I do not
agree with all those attempts to add "features" of other languages to
Free Pascal. I appreciate the efforts of the folks involved in Free
Pascal for a long time, as this provides me with the opportunity to
keep working in the programming language/environment that for me makes
the most sense and that I am used to for 38 years. And I honestly
loath to see that people argue that there should be new language
constructs and such, just because it is what more popular programming
languages provide. I am not in to participate in a popularity contest,
I am trying to get work done...
Ralf
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