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

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 16:46 -0500, Doug Gregor wrote:
> 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?

This sounds great to me. Hopefully you can get the document started, as
someone who's experienced with this?

Personally, I don't see anything in the boost::bind API that I dislike,
though the "disconnecting all signals of a certain group" on that page
is a little odd.

Do you know what platforms boost::bind currently runs on? That might be
a practical consideration for the API. I've managed to port libsigc++ to
just about every compiler (latest versions) except HP-UX and the very
latest SUN Forte (though I expect them to fix those bugs soon).


-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com