Re: austin107.txt, XBD ERN 38

[yyyyyyyyyy@xxxxxxx]

-- 8< austin107.txt --
The consensus was that whilst it might be a useful commentary to the standard, it is a major work item that would not be addressed in the short term. There were some concerns about maintenance and viability of some approaches, {and} it was felt that the Guide books provide a vehicle for some of this.
--- end 8< ---

Some comments:
   First, I believe text is missing 'and', as in braces above, to be grammatically correct. Second, this item IS being addressed now, by me, as I have to do the bulk of it anyways for the project I'm working on for purposes of creating a task completion timeline. I've done the "here's", mostly, and am working on extracting the relevant "this's" from XBD, XCU, and XSH into them as I go, in a manner that provides me the benefit of these tables. Question is, is there interest by the steering committee to commission me to boil this work down and pretty it up as an appendix to XBD or XRAT, in a manner similar to the C99 spec's appendices, when I do finish the files that pertain to my project, so that others can benefit?

   I do feel strongly that the tables' usefulness, to people working on implementations of the standard for processors other than the one I'm working with, would be heavily diluted by relegating it to a volume separate from the standard, even if those nominally do have more editorial flexibility, as it's a clarifying adjunct to the structural bandage I feel the majority of the margin codes represent. I won't get into why I feel this, as that's out of scope for the TC, but have white paper text for any that are interested that wish to contact me. Once the initial PDF source was done, I'd expect ongoing editing work maintaining it would be relatively minimal, with only the occasional table row insert or delete; presuming the specification won't change too radically for future revisions in terms of defined interfaces and utilities.

   I doubt I'll finish up sufficiently before May 24, the commentary cut off date, so that a full formal proposal would be available, but as I am making consistent headway, it's entirely possible a PDF could be available for inclusion in the final TC. The TC drafts could be worded that space is reserved for a supplemental annex to be provided subsequently, under the title Functional Group Summary Tables, just in case of normal snafus.

Cheers,
Mark