We are talking past each other due to multiple possible interpretations of english language terms (do we need a technical standard for english?).
I'm using the term standard in the sense of _technical standard_ as described in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_standard). Let's denote a standard library interpreted this way as a _standardised library_. However, the Nim community seems to interpret the term standard as an adjective as in " _a standard hotel room_ ", - synonym with terms such as normal, usual, baseline, customary or prevailing. Let's denote a standard library interpreted this way as a _de-facto library_. I'm using the term Nim 1.0 language (specification) in the sense of ISO/IEC 9899:2011 language (specification), which includes, among other things, the C standard library. However, the Nim community seems to interpret the term Nim 1.0 language in stricter sense as the things specified in [Nim manual (specification)](https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html). I'm inclined to agree that at this point of Nim language maturity there is no need to rigorously specify a standarised library. However, the need may raise later when competing implementations start to appear. The [BASIC programming language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BASIC_dialects) is a cautionary example of how a language may disintegrate into non-compatible dialects with their own sets of documentation if no adherence to a specification is required (and with things like [MicroPython](http://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/library/index.html), Python seems dangerous too...). With these readings in mind, it makes sense to state that the de-facto library that ships as part of the Nim reference implementation is not part of the Nim language specification and therefore out-of-scope problem in perfecting Nim. Some concerns still remain: * The Nim reference implementation should be made available as source and as installation (the language part implementation of the compiler without any out-of-spec-libraries bundled in) * Will there be any assurance that the de-facto library will remain backwards-compatible after 1.0 (append-only, deprecation marks instead of replacements)? * Some elementary arithmetic and string handling functions like _sqrt_ and _intToStr_ should be moved from library to language specification to make the language more general-purpose. * It is unfortunate that the Nim language and the Nim compiler are both called Nim (in contrast to C/gcc, Java/javac, Python/CPython, Go/gc, ...). To avoid confusion, the latter should be renamed to something else ( _nimcc_? _nimdom_?), after which I 'm grittingly willing to accept the liberal use of the term standard as in " _nimcc standard library, the de-facto library for Nim language users_ "). * It must be clearly stated somewhere which library modules are available for which environments and targets - maybe in some kind of table form. I hope this helps.
