Re: Corrections to The ANSI-ISO Pascal FAQ

2metre wrote:

> 
> Definitely wrong! Standard Pascal was defined long before the ISO 
> standard. You may wish to ignore the earlier standard, but that doesn't 
> mean it didn't exist, and is doesn't mean that other people who read 
> these messages concur with your censored version of the past.

Well, then we'll have to just disagree then.  I do not consider anything 
before ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983 to be a "standard".  Wirth's original work 
and the 2nd edition of the J&W just give a description of the language 
with lots of ambiguities.  The 3rd J&W with lots of revision from 
Mickel/Miner comes closer but that they just included text from a draft 
of the standard I quoted above.

Try to read tea leaves and guess what was in Wirth's mind is an 
interesting exercise, but I would never call it a "standard".

BTW, the charter for the Pascal standards bodies (there were officially 
four, ANSI, IEEE, ISO, BSI with all the work occurring at the ANSI/IEEE 
joint meetings) was to standardize existing practice.  Nowhere do I 
remember reading that the committee was to read Wirth's mind and figure 
out what he wanted to say.




-- 
John Reagan
HP Pascal/{A|I}MACRO for OpenVMS Project Leader
Hewlett-Packard Company