Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!aarons
From: aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: More fun with WG17
Summary: democracy debate
Keywords: standardization =/= invention of a new language
Message-ID: <1794@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Nov 89 14:37:22 GMT
References: <2609@munnari.oz.au> <696@sce.carleton.ca> <2643@munnari.oz.au> <1354@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> <2688@munnari.oz.au>
Organization: School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, Sussex Univ. UK
Lines: 35

From the point of view of an organization (Sussex University)
responsible for the implementation of a fairly widely used and
commercially marketed Prolog system (i.e. the Prolog subsystem of
POPLOG, marketed for us by Integral Solutions Ltd -- as a result of
a management buy-out from SD-Scicon, the previous distributors) I
must say that in general I find myself in total sympathy with
Richard O'Keefe's comments.

If Prolog were already so widely used that multi-million dollar
business awaited the developers and implementors of Prolog systems,
then production of a radically new standard for the language might
be justified in that costs would be recovered.

At present my impression is that NONE of the prolog vendors around
the world would be in a position to afford major revision of the
language along with software to help all their customers convert
old code to the new language. There would be tremendous wasted
effort with not much gain.

So the effect could well turn out to be that vendors go on providing
more or less the old version (with perhaps a few useful extensions)
and that would remain the DE FACTO standard, making the official
standard nothing more than an academic curiosity.

I have not read the latest version of the new standard, but
Richard's quotations and comments leave me feeling that it is likely
to diverge far too much from the existing widely "agreed" de facto
standard, and, as he points out, would break too much code.

(Incidentally, the Poplog group used to have a representative on the
BSI standard committee, but we lost interest when it seemed that
the manpower cost of participating was not worthwhile in view of
likely results.)

Aaron