Hi, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard!
On 21 Jan 98  16:25:10 you wrote to Balog Pal
 BP> OTOH some platforms are frozen. Say, Microsoft develop C++ for WIN32
 BP> but left the 16 bit version as it was some 5 years ago. You can't
 BP> write code portable for WIN16 and WIN32 that really use C++.  There
 BP> are no templates, no exception handling, etc in 1.52.
 JdBP> This is neither a problem, nor a reason for a C++ Standard.
 JdBP> It isn't a problem because Borland C++ supports templates and
 JdBP> exceptions, and so does Watcom C++, and they both have 16-bit
 JdBP> compilers that have all of the language features of the 32-bit
 JdBP> compilers.
Not nearly.  Borland had templates in 3.0+, exceptions in 4.0+ versions. But
several new C++ features are only in 5.0+ versions. While their last (AFAIK)
16-bit compatible version, 4.52 remain as "no longer supported".   Watcom I
don't know, tried once a version around 10.5 (recent that time) but it came
with an "enviromnent" not much better than callinc CL from dos prompt. Stone
age.   No one around use Watcom. A plenty of people tried. Probably not an
unlucky coincidence.
 JdBP> So anyone choosing Microsoft C++ as their tool has only
 JdBP> themselves to blame when it won't do this particular job.
Well, really. But that is just yet another situation where you may be nice
but not clever. No ultimate compilers around. :(
 JdBP> It isn't a reason for a C++ Standard because standardising a language
 JdBP> does nothing for portability in this respect.  The presence or absence
 JdBP> of a C++ Standard is irrelevant to whether or not there exists an
 JdBP> "up-to-date" implementation for any given machine architecture.
But why it take so long to create one? Why it did not appear years ago?  In
thah case "portability" would be out of question.  Now every developer make
his own quirks. It would not be needed, just implemet what is standardized.
And you will see, keeping that pace by the time the standard will be out the
last developer supporting 16 bit dos will be out of business.
Paul
... If it's not on fire, it's a software problem
--- GNU/Linux
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