At 05:38 PM 11/15/98 +0100, Christoph & Ursula Grein wrote: >Why should all languages use similar syntaxes? Exactly. There are, on the other hand, reasons for languages to have different syntaxes. In this particular case, the advantages of the selected syntax in the context of Ada were felt to outweigh the "disadvantage" of not having a class keyword. When Jean Ichbiah proposed an alternative that did use the class keyword, these advantages were not yet known. It is possible that someone could come up with a notation with classes that allowed the same degree of expressiveness as the current grammar, but I doubt it. For example, the current notation allows for untagged views of tagged types, as well as private tagged types: type Foo is tagged private; versus: type Foo is private; ... private type Foo is tagged... Robert I. Eachus with Standard_Disclaimer; use Standard_Disclaimer; function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...