TITLE: ANSI and ISO standards


PROBLEM: bclar3@osf1.gmu.edu

I am interested in why the A in Ansi still stands for American.  Since, 
obviously, the standards being churned out are anything but uniquely 
American, one might wonder why noone has petitioned to have the name
changed.   


RESPONSE: clamage@Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Clamage), 24 Apr 95

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) is a large organization that
ratifies standards for use within the US for all manner of things, not
just programming languages. Many of the standards produced by ANSI have
little application outside the US, such as mechanical parts and tools
whose sizes and weights are specified in inches and ounces. (Daddy, why
does everyone in the world except us use the metric system? I don't
know, kid, who do you think will win the World Series this year?)

ANSI also standardizes things which are of international interest. ANSI
cannot realistically write a standard for the rest of the world, so it
participates in ISO.

It has happened in the past that ANSI and ISO independently (or nearly
independently) produced standards for the same thing which differed.
Having two "standards" which are different helps no one. An example
is the IEEE/ANSI standard for Pascal, which differs importantly from
the ISO standard.

More recently, ISO decided to adopt the ANSI standard for C without any
technical changes. Unfortunately, ANSI and ISO had independent internal
requirements for standards documents, so the formatting and section numbering
had to be changed. The intent was not to change the meaning of anything
in the standard, but again, having two standards which differ is not helpful.

ANSI then formulated rules allowing conformance with ISO standards, and
in a spirit of international cooperation, adopted the ISO C standard as
the ANSI standard. Thus, we have just one standard, not two, for C. This
situation benefits everyone.

Finally, ANSI adopted rules for type "I" (international) committees,
those which work together with ISO to produce a single standard. The
C++ Committee is one of the first type "I" committees. This organizational
step will eliminate the confusion experienced in the past, and result in
a single standard for use both domestically and internationally. Once
again, this procedure benefits everyone.

Conspiracy-minded people sometimes like to find a sinister interpretation
for the internationalization of ANSI committees. The simple fact in the
case of the C++ committee is that the technical work is done together
with no concern about who represents what. The whole point is to find
solutions which everyone can accept.