NCITS Announces the Public Review Comment Period for ISO/IEC FCD 9899, Information technology - Programming languages - Programming Language C (Revision of ISO/IEC 9899:1990) Washington D.C., September 1998 - NCITS (National Committee for Information Technology Standards is announcing the public comment period for ISO/IEC FCD 9899. The public review extends from September 11, 1998, to November 10, 1998. This International Standard specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C programming language. It specifies - the representation of C programs; - the syntax and constraints of the C language; - the semantic rules for interpreting C programs; - the representation of input data to be processed by C programs; - the representation of output data produced by C programs; - the restrictions and limits imposed by a conforming implementation of C. Note: This draft international standard is being processed simultaneously as an American National Standard and an International Standard. Public Review Comment Instructions: To avoid unnessecary committee effort, do not send formal comments unless the references are to (SC22 N2794) Final CD Ballot for FCD 9899 - Information Technology - Programming Languages - Programming Language C (Revision of ISO/IEC 9899:1990). In order to facilitate the speedy consideration of comments, the following suggestions are strongly encouraged: 1) use attached form for public review comments; 2) please submit them via email to (ddonovan@itic.org). All public review comments must include name, company name, address, telephone number, and email address if applicable. The public review period closes on November 10, 1998. All commentors are urged to submit comments as early in the public review period as possible. Submit all comments to: NCITS Secretariat, Attn.: Deborah J. Donovan, 1250 Eye Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, Email: ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us. Send a copy to: ANSI, Attn.: BSR Center, 11 West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036 (wluk@ansi.org). A call for possible patents and pertinent issues (copyrights, trademarks) is also being issued. Please submit information on these issues to the NCITS Secretariat at 1250 Eye Street NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20005. Email: NCITS@itic.nw.dc.us FAX: (202)638-4922. The hardcopy document can be purchased for $225.00 from American National Standards Institute, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036.Telephone: 212-642-4900 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Attachment: Guidelines for Making a Public Comment on ISO/IEC FCD 9899 (SC22 N2794) ================================================================ A. Introduction --------------- A revision of the C standard has been ongoing for some years with most of the work being done by a group of about 25 people, most of whose time and expenses are funded by their employers. Many of these people represent small companies or are self-employed. This group meets only three times per year, for four and a half days per meeting. In order to make the best use of their time and to meet the planned revision schedule, it is therefore necessary to streamline the public comment submission process. To assist with this, submittors are asked to attach a cover sheet to EACH set of public comments. The cover sheet is intended not only to provide a summary for the committee members reviewing submissions but also to focus the comments. B. Cover Sheet -------------- Before filling out the following cover sheet, read the instructions that follow it. ======================= Cover sheet starts here ============ Public Comment Number(s) PC-____ to PC-____ ISO/IEC FCD 9899 (SC22 N2794) Public Comment =========================================== Date: 1998-__-__ Author: ___________________________________________________ Author Affiliation: _________________________________________ Postal Address: ____________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ E-mail Address: ____________________________________________ Telephone Number: __________________________________________ Fax Number: ________________________________________________ Number of individual comments: _____________________________ ======================= Cover sheet ends here ============== Here are the instructions for filling out the cover sheet: Public Comment Number(s) PC-____ to PC-____ -- These numbers will be assigned once a submission is determined to be complete, from a packaging point of view. That is, it has a complete cover sheet and the comments are clearly stated. Once a submission has been accepted, the submittor will be so informed and will be told their corresponding comment numbers. Date -- Date of submission in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Author -- State your name and title in the way in which you wish to be addressed in future correspondence. Author Affiliation -- Who are you representing? Your employer? A user organization? Yourself? Postal Address -- Self explanatory. Please include country. E-mail Address -- In Internet format: user@domain Telephone Number -- Please specify your telephone number using the ITU International Format. This format is: +country-code area-code number. For example, a number in England looks like +44 181 371 1138 while one in the U.S. looks like +1 703 555 1212. Fax Number -- See Telephone Number above. Number of individual comments -- Self explanatory. C. Comment Format ----------------- Starting with 1, please assign consecutive numbers to your comments and arrange them as follows: ------------------------------------------------------------------ Comment 1. Category: ____________ Committee Draft subsection: __________ Title: ... Detailed description: ... ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Comment n. Category: ____________ Committee Draft subsection: __________ Title: ... Detailed description: ... ------------------------------------------------------------------ Category should be one of the following: * Editorial change/non-normative contribution * Request for information/clarification * Feature that should be included * Feature that should be removed * Normative change to intent of existing feature * Normative change to existing feature retaining the original intent * Inconsistency * Other (please specify) Committee Draft subsection should indicate the relevant section(s) of the draft standard. The Title should be a short phrase that succinctly captures the main issue, suitable for identifying the comment in an index document. For example, ``There is a problem with const qualification'' or ``There should be support for packed-decimal arithmetic.'' The Detailed description should contain all the information that is necessary to describe the problem. If you want a specific solution, state what that is. If you can live with any reasonable solution state that. If you can suggest alternatives, do so, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each. Wherever possible, please supply replacement wording. Simply saying that ``This is wrong.'' or ``I don't like these words.'' is not helpful. Help us to help you by being clear, concise, constructive, and restrained!