Evaluating manufacturing machine control language standards: an implementer's view

The focus of this paper is: how can standards for manufacturing machine control languages be evaluated? What is required of a standard defining one of these languages so that implementations will interoperate? The paper provides a set of specific questions to ask about a control language standard. Reasons why the questions should be asked are given. Four machine control languages are used as examples: EIA-274-D, BCL, DMIS, and STEP-NC.