J3/03-175

Date:     1 Apr 2003
To:       J3
From:     Richard Maine
Subject:  Action on Australian comment

WG5 delegated to J3 the handling of the informal comments
from Australia on Annex C.  Those comments are detailed in
WG5 paper N1499.

I propose that we make no edits in response to these comments.

One of the proposed edits appears to be suggesting that a
requirement be stated in Annex C.  Annex C is informative and is
not a suitable place for requirements.  WG5 forwarded this to us
on the basis that it was not suggesting changes to any normative
text.  If this requirement were moved into normative text, that
would exceed the actions authorized by WG5.  It would also
invalidate existing compilers, making it a significant technical
change in requirements and causing several objections.

The other two edits propose that the standard make
recommendations about implementations.  The level of detail in
these recommendations is not consistent with the level of detail
that the standard discusses for other comparable issues.  For
example, the standard does not make any recommendations about the
extensions used for object file names or the content of object
files.