[sigc] Proposal for standardization in C++ Library TR2

[Doug Gregor <dgregor cs indiana edu>]

Hello,

Back in April, the C++ standards committee met in Lillehammer, Norway  
to discuss extensions to the C++ language and library. The Library  
Working Group portion of the committee decided to create a second  
library technical report (called TR2) containing additional libraries  
for C++. Technical reports are not official standards, but it is likely  
that they will become standards and that vendors will implement them.  
For reference, the list of proposals that became TR1 is here:

	http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/ 
library_technical_report.html

I am the author of another signals & slots library (Boost.Signals),  
which shares much of its interface with libsigc++ 2. At the  
aforementioned committee meeting I asked if there was any interest in  
including signals & slots in TR2 and receiving and overwhelmingly  
positive response.

I propose that the developers of libsigc++ 2 and Boost.Signals  
collaboratively write a proposal to include signals & slots  
functionality in TR2. The deadline for this proposal will be  
mid-September, before the next C++ committee meeting. I've been through  
the proposal process and regularly attend committee meetings, and I can  
confidently say that work on this proposal will be gladly accepted by  
the library working group for TR2.

We've discussed this previously, but I think it's time to buckle down  
and get it done. Our previous discussions resulted in a comparison  
between the current states of the libraries, here:

	http://www.3sinc.com/opensource/boost.bind-vs-sigc2.html

We can definitely start by writing up the common parts of the  
interfaces (which should be quite large!) and then hammer out the  
little details in the end. The proposal will likely differ slightly  
from both libraries, but that's fine. However, we should avoid major  
deviations from existing, working code because those tend to make  
committees nervous.

What say you?

	Thanks,
	Doug