| We believe that a high degree of compatibility with MS is very,
very important for DEC C++. We've done a lot on this in the past
and intend to do a lot in the future. We have some ancedotal
evidence that is is easier to port from Visual C++ to DEC C++
than other non-Windows C++ implementions, and we know of many
customers who are using a combination of Visual C++ and DEC C++.
Can we do better? Yes.
Is there a time lag between the time that Visual C++ supportsa
language feature and when DEC C++ supports it? Yes
Is it important to minimize the time lag? Absolutely.
Visual C++ V4.0 pulled ahead of us by adding some features from
the emerging ANSI draft standard, and we have agressive plans in
place to do the same. Other work is going on in parallel to improve
the level of dialect compatibility. Something else that will help
in the future will the approval of C++ language standard. This
won't remove the need to support Microsoft extensions, but it
will help because many customers are interested in being able
to write more portable C++ code and will restrict themselves
to the standard language.
We are very interested in any and all inputs related to Microsoft
compatibility.
By the way, note 3345 (referenced in .0) isn't related to language
dialect but rather to file format differences. (Nonetheless, doing
something to address 3345 would be a good idea.)
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