The C++ Standards Committee met last week in Berlin, Germany. Of interest to Boosters: * All of TR1 except special functions has been voted into C++0x, the next standard. Special functions were supported by the Library Working Group (LWG), including vendors such as Dinkumware, but they didn't fly in full committee. Compiler vendors indicate great worry about support costs. This vote isn't necessarily the end of the story since support for special functions was strong, although not quite enough to achieve the consensus needed. (The committee will only go ahead if there is consensus - a simple majority isn't good enough.) * Boost Filesystem was voted into TR2. * Boost Lexical Cast has been tentatively accepted by the LWG for TR2. * Boost Any has been tentatively accepted by the LWG for TR2. * A Boost Date-Time query was presented at the last meeting, and LWG members again in Berlin indicated interest in seeing a full proposal for TR2. * A Boost Networking [asio] query was presented, and the LWG has indicated their interest in a full proposal for TR2. The developer of a competing proposal has graciously thrown his support behind the Boost proposal, and may propose some additional higher level functionality. * Boost Threads has been reaffirmed as the LWG's choice as the basis for a TR2 threading library. Pete Becker's www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1907.html is the most recent version of the proposal. It will be refined and modified as work progresses. Howard Hinnant plans to propose unifying the lock classes into scoped_lock/shared_lock and possibly one other class. Pete will propose a function to access the underlying operating system handles to allow access to non-portable functionality. I've committed to review error handling to ensure handling of operating system errors is consistent between all TR2 libraries. * It looks more and more likely that Concepts will go into C++0x. If Concepts do go into the core language, the LWG has indicated their intent to percolate Concepts throughout the Standard Library. (Concepts were being held up by two competing proposals, but those two proposals are in process of being coalesced into a single proposal by Bjarne Stroustrup and Doug Gregor.) The next committee meetings are: October, 2006, Portland, Oregon. See www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2006/n1946.htm Spring, 2007, Oxford, England. Fall, 2007, Kona, Hawaii This coming October is the deadline for TR2 proposals. See www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1810.html --Beman