That's the kind of thinking that makes the C++ standard unreadable to most. I started out reading and memorizing^※ the original casually-written Annotated Reference Manual. As things got more formal, a casual word would be replaced with the more formal phrase, everywhere. Then more qualifiers were added, such as "non-cv-qualified" and so on. If you didn't already know what it meant, it's thick goo.

I would envision a spec that used clear and mostly terse terminology. Like Perl itself, make the most common terms short. Rather than a dozen adjectives followed by X, make that whole thing called something, and the less-constrained (rarely used) version be decorated instead.

—John

※: I impressed many, including Stroustrup himself, with my ability to name the chapter and verse where a particular feature was described, so everyone else at the table could turn to it. I was young then.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.