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Editor's Forum

I just came back from a week in the woods in Finland. Yes, Finns really are friendly. And yes, they really do run bare naked between wood-heated saunas and freezing lake water (at least on special occasions). But no, that was not my principal reason for spending that week in the woods. I spent most of my time there in SC22 committee meetings.

SC22 is the parent committee, within ISO, of all programming-language standards committees. Of interest to readers of this magazine are WG14 (C) and WG21 (C++). As Convenor of WG14, I represent the interests of the C community to SC22. As an active member of WG21, I also care what happens to C++. (Steve Carter of Bellcore is the WG21 Convenor.)

A committee that meets but once a year can have pretty intense meetings. This one was no exception. Between saunas and dinners, we hammered out several useful documents. I put most of my effort into helping shape procedures for interpreting and amending programming language standards. Those procedures should help us process the stack of requests for interpretation that ANSI has accumulated. They will also make it easier to fix a few loose ends in the current C Standard.

An amazing amount of effort went into matters of internationalization. Seems everybody in the standards arena is doing something in that area. There's rapidly growing interest in language support for writing applications that adapt readily to multiple cultures around the world. In particular:

Meanwhile, of course, all the major vendors are proceeding with their own plans. Some bear only the loosest relationship to the work of the standards committees. Some compete outright with these standards-in-progress.

I have observed more than once that most people still don't care about internationalization. Nor should they — there's plenty to do simply writing code that speaks one language. I have also observed more than once that standards too often get finalized before they're ever implemented. Standards committees often indulge in excess invention. I have even observed that standards can be used as blunt instruments. Companies and consortia often push for complex "proprietary" standards that put outsiders at a disadvantage.

Which of these countervailing forces will dominate? I can't say right now. But there sure is a lot of activity all of a sudden in that specialized backwater called internationalization. It's getting to be fun to watch. We'll keep you informed.

P.J. Plauger
pjp@plauger.com