Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!willett!dwp
From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Min vs Kitchen
Message-ID: <1111.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jun 90 19:55:15 GMT
References: <10775@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: Latest link in the ForthNet chain.  (Pgh, PA)
Lines: 37

In <10775@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, bouma@cs.purdue.EDU (William J. Bouma) writes:

>    Is that "add-on" (say, floating point) part of the standard then or
>    not? If so, then what difference does it make if I include it in my
>    forth core? What if I provide the ability to strip it out of an app-
>    lication that doesn't need it?
> 
>    If it is not part of the standard, then I am free to write my own
>    package. If I write a standard program that uses that package, others
>    will have to load my package to use my program. Thus my application
>    carries around this extra baggage.  Also, my word set may conflict
>    with that of another application you want to run in tandem with it.

I think this is an interesting question.  I suspect that the answer lies
along the line of difference between 'conforming' programs and 'conforming'
implementations.  

>    Again, how is this different from C with its ability to load
>    library functions? I have packages in C for doing different types
>    of memory management. All I need to know is the interface functions
>    and off I go...
And now that we have a (proposal for a) set of memory allocation words
you can write your own (stack/heap/GC'ing) collector on top of them.
What's there (in BASIS12) is definitely a step in the right direction.
(I don't know whether or not it should be the last step, though.)

>    The interfaces to such important and much used things should be
>    specified in a standard.
Yes, that is pretty much what the standard seems to say.  The dictionary
is quite a different matter.  Perhaps Mitch or someone else can enlighten
us as to how the dictionary structure issues were resolved?

-Doug

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