Re: thoughts on martin's proposed patch for GCC and UTF-8

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

    For reference, here are the draft C9x pragmas and what they do.

These arithmetic parameters should not be done with #pragma, not with
any kind of #-command.  That is because macro expansions cannot
produce a #-command.  I told the committee about this problem ten
years ago, but it seems that the temptation of the #pragma idea
is too strong for mere logic to overcome.

We should design a cleaner syntax for these parameters, one that can
be produced by macro expansion, and we should deprecate the use of
pragmas for this purpose.  Actually I did design one ten years ago or
so.  Maybe the committee still has records of what it was.

If some of us are still on the committee, could those people please
forward the suggestion to the committee, before it is too late?  (I was a
member but left when they insisted on paying to be a member.)


Locale specification is a different kind of operation.
It does not affect the meaning of expressions;
instead it says how to read lines of source code.
That is why a #-command is ok for locale specification,
even tho it is a bad interface for these floating point parameters.