Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Forth
Message-ID: <9001191304.AA23264@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 18:13:12 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List <FIGI-L%SCFVM.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 45

> say that I would be unwilling to start a graphics project on any
> workstation platform after 1992 using any language that did not include a
> binding to X Windows.  My reason?  Almost every job ad in misc.jobs.offered
> that mentions graphics _requires_ X Windows experience.

Several points:

1. So far, Forth hasn't made many inroads into the workstation market.
   I doubt that it ever will.  (My own work is in some sense an exception;
   Forth may become popular as the boot firmware for workstations.  However,
   that has little to do with discussions of window system bindings.)

2. Even if X is ubiquitous in the workstation market, that doesn't
   necessarily mean that it has much, if any, impact in the Mac or PC markets.

3. There are many competing toolkits and "look and feel" guidelines
   on top of X.  Just having the binding to the underlying window
   mechanism isn't enough.

> five times the price most potential purchasers are willing to pay.  A
> direct effect is that the standards are slow to be adopted, and that the
> "big folks" get a big head start on using them.  Since these prices also
> apply to the (photocopied) draft standards,

The price for the ANSI Forth draft standards aren't inflated.  The X3J14
committee sells the draft standards for $10 a pop, which is almost exactly
what it costs to photocopy and bind them (figure 3 cents a page x 150
pages + 1.50 for the binding + the time it takes the secretary to go
to the copy shop and fill out the address label, etc.).

You can't participate in the standards effort for free, but in the case
of the ANSI Forth effort, every attempt has been made to minimize the
cost.  Participation by mail (buying draft standards and submitting
proposals) costs 10 or 20 dollars, and going to meetings can be done
for a few hundred dollars.  Meetings alternate between the east coast
and the west coast (where Forth programmers tend to be concentrated).
If a meeting is held withing driving distance of you, you can attend
that meeting for free (this is not an unlikely think; they really are
scattered around pretty well).  It will cost me about $200 to attend
next week's meeting; I got a cheap plane ticket to San Diego, and I'm
sharing a hotel room with another committee member.  So, you could
reasonably expect to be able to attend every other meeting for about
$600 a year, a far cry from $20K.

Mitch