JTC1/SC22/WG2 (no longer active) - Pascal
JTC1/SC22/WG2 (no longer active) - Pascal
SC5/WG4 had produced the first Pascal standard. Following the SC5 practice at the time the project was established in the late 1970s, of each language standard having a "sponsoring body", this standard was first published in 1982 as a British standard (the UK being the sponsoring body for Pascal), though the standard was developed by SC5/WG4 rather than by the UK committee alone. The ISO standard, published the following year, was simply an endorsement of this British standard (with an equivalent French standard referenced as the French text).
The new WG2 embarked on a project to produce another standard for Extended Pascal, which was in due course published in 1991. It also produced a revised version of the original Pascal standard (now informally termed "classic Pascal"), which appeared in 1990; the changes consisted only of minor corrections. (Following the new practices of SC22, these were first published as international standards, and on the appearance of the revised "classic Pascal" the original British standard was withdrawn in its favour.)
Apart from the publication of these standards, WG2 worked on object-oriented and other extensions to Pascal and on internationalization issues, as well as dealing with maintenance and interpretation issues on the Pascal standards and, in liaison with WG11, on Pascal bindings to the language-independent arithmetic and language-independent datatype standards.
At its 1994 plenary, when it was clear that there would be insufficient active participation to support a project to produce a Technical Report on object-oriented extensions to Pascal, SC22 resolved that no further development work would be done in SC22 on the Pascal standards. The US Pascal committee, X3J9, was asked to assume responsibility for maintenance of the international standards; X3J9 is also continuing work on object-oriented extensions and other projects. Enquiries should be addressed to the X3J9 chair, Tony Hetherington.
The British Standards Institution provided a a validation service using a Validation Suite produced under their auspices. Production of an Extended Pascal Validation Suite continues, the technical work being performed and coordinated by Prospero Software.
WG2 held its 20th and final meeting in April 1995 and was wound up on April 30. During the ten years 1985-95 it held 6 meetings in the USA, 5 in the UK, 3 in Germany, 2 in Bulgaria, 2 in Canada, 1 in Austria, and 1 in Holland. Approximately 45 experts participated in the work of WG2, from the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Holland, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The UK held the secretariat and provided the convenor throughout the lifetimes of SC5/WG4 and SC22/WG2. The original convenor of SC5/WG4 was Tony Addyman of the University of Salford; he was succeeded by Brian Wichmann, of the National Physical Laboratory, as convenor of SC22/WG2 until 1990, and then by David Joslin of the University of Teesside.
A history of the Pascal standardization project can be found in: