[CL] inconsistency in Annex B? (actually types in general)

[John F. Sowa]

Pat,

I started writing this note before the recent exchanges
with Chris M. on this thread.  Following are some comments
on the interoperability issue:

PH> Its time we stopped being an endless committee and actually
> wrote a standard. In fact, I thought this was what we had done.

Yes, but every ISO standard is reviewed at least every 5 years,
and a revision can be considered -- not necessarily by us.

PH> Sounds like deja vu all over again to me.

Members come and go, but committees are immortal.

> If those features are intended to be meaningful and also
> interoperable...

What is your definition of the term "interoperable"?  Following
are the first few definitions found by Google:

    "The ability of a system or a product to work with other
    systems or products."

    "The ability for one system to communicate or work with another."

    "The capability of two or more hardware devices or two or more
    software routines to work harmoniously together."

    "The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange
    information and to use the information that has been exchanged."

These definitions permit multiple cliques of interoperable systems
that need not interoperate with systems in a different clique.

> If being or not being a 'type' is considered to be a meaningful
> distinction, then presumably the users of language A will require
> that content in A will retain this structure if translated into CL
> and then translated back.

That is a reasonable assumption, which would be met by a translation
to extended CLIF or extended CGIF, but not to core CLIF or core CGIF.
If core CL had been adequate for all purposes, there would have been
no reason for us to define the extended dialects.

PH> I don't accept that this is irrelevant or a non-problem. It is right
> at the heart of the idea of a common logic for interoperability.

That depends on what a definition of interoperability you assume.
Trying to make all systems in some unspecified universe interoperable
is probably impossible.  But the definitions above seem to be based on
the assumption that interoperability is only defined for a specific
set or clique of systems.

John