In article <87fwve53ve....@xemacs.org>, Hrvoje Niksic <hnik...@xemacs.org> wrote:
> It's not a matter of quality, but of intended audience. To most > ordinary programmers the standards documents such as the C standard, the > C++ standard, or the Python reference are quite dense and hard to use as > a reference, and yet they are considered quite well done. Not only is the C++ reference obtuse and dense, it's also not commonly available. It is copyright by ISO and only available for a fee. I own a copy, but I'd venture to say that the vast majority of C++ programmers out there have never seen one. Heck, if was a programmer and wanted to spend money today to buy a copy, I wouldn't even know where to go to order one. I googled for "iso c++ standard" and found http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/, which includes a well-hidden link to http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/standards, which says, "Published ISO and IEC standards can be purchased from a member body of ISO or IEC". How one would go about figuring out who such member body is, I have no idea. Any self-respecting C++ programmer would have given up the scavenger hunt by now. Just kept throwing typecasts at your code until it compiles, and move on. Python may not have a reference manual which is up to the quality of the C++ manual, but what's there is freely available on docs.python.org. As for the subject of this thread, you might want to check out http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200703/msg00036.html. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
