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It's an issue of where the people who want a standard think they
will have the support to create a standard using a process they are
comfortable with. Yes, the standards for many languages, not to
mention the original ASCII character set, were developed under
ANSI. But look at JavaScript I mean ECMAScript done under the
auspices of ECMA. Sun started to create a Java standard under
ISO/IEC but changed their mind and switched to their own Java
Community Process. The National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) (formerly the National Bureau of Standards)
publishes standards for some things of interest to the US Government
-- <span
style="color: rgb(65, 65, 65); font-family: zenon, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Federal
Information Processing Standards (FIPS). In most cases the work
is done by volunteers, often with the support of their employers
if they aren't an independent consultant or whatever. The
accrediting organization provides the process and some
administrative overhead. I don't know about now, but ANSI sold
copies of their standards to help support themselves.<br>
<br>
And standards are used as competitive weapons by companies. If
Company A convinces the committee that their language features are
better than company B's, and A's are written into the standard,
then A is standard-compliant (with respect to those features) from
the get-go, while B will have some work to do which may affect
their customer base. Generally, I believe that people want to get
a standard which will give them a programming language (&
library) that they want to use, so there is a common goal in
sight. Traditionally standards were adopted from existing
practice, and sometimes this can mean that the process is
relatively quick. (I think the original COBOL standard was taken
from a manufacturer's language reference manual by Grace Hopper.
</span><span
style="color: rgb(65, 65, 65); font-family: zenon, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">ISOLatin-1
was a small change to the DEC Multinational Character Set.</span><span
style="color: rgb(65, 65, 65); font-family: zenon, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">)
Sometimes a committee starts reinventing things and it can take a
while. Whether or not it actually finds users depends on how well
the committee did their job, and what the vendors and their
customers decide. (Dare I mention BASIC?)<br>
<br>
Remember that standards also cover many other things like the SAE
standards for bolts.<br>
</span><br>
- Aron (a member of X3J16 [C++] for 2 years)<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAO2qRdM3-W2AbBK88rpJjzCgc15BC8efuvkkqN92+ywvbCcc6w@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at
12:22 PM segaloco via TUHS <<a
href="mailto:tuhs@tuhs.org" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">tuhs@tuhs.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
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style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Good
morning, I was wondering if anyone has the scoop on the
rationale behind the selection of standards bodies for the
publication of UNIX and UNIX-adjacent standards. C was
published via the ANSI route as X3.159, whereas POSIX was
instead published by the IEEE route as 1003.1. Was there
every any consideration of C through IEEE or POSIX through
ANSI instead? Is there an appreciable difference
suggested by the difference in publishers? In any case,
both saw subsequent adoption by ISO/IEC, so the track to
an international standard seems to lead to the same
organizations.<br>
<br>
- Matt G.<br>
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