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From: koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: How will others see ANS Forth?
Message-ID: <9899@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 90 21:29:54 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 43


 
I had a conversation with a Peter Lee of CMU this week about
the ANS Forth Standard effort.  Peter is a professor in the
School of CS in the advanced programming language group.  He
was also one of my dissertation advisers, and has a fair idea of
what Forth is about.
 
I told Peter about the floored/symmetric/truncated division
issue.  He told me that the ML functional programming language
specified symmetric division in the standard.  However, the
first implementation used truncated division for speed,
because "they realized that having any other division as
the default was *stupid*".  ML is not supposed to be a particularly
fast language, either.  This comment comes from a professional 
semanticist and language designer.  Apparently, now (several 
years later) some folks have complained enough that 
implementations are starting to default to symmetric 
division (after much resistance the purists, of whom there
are many in CS, won out).
 
I told him about the problem caused when the 83 Forth Standard
changed definitions of existing words (e.g. NOT).  He was
amused.  I then told him about the compromise method of
using new names for functions with conflicting widespread
usage.  He just laughed and shook his head.
 
Some folks are worried about how Forth will be judged when
outsiders see the new standard.  My brief interaction with
Peter indicates that perhaps there is some merit to their
concern.  One way to solve this would be to find a few
non-Forthers to review the standard in its penultimate form.
This should include both engineers and computer scientists
who are *not* Forth experts.  I can probably talk Peter into
a 1- or 2-hour review.  Can anyone else recruit people from 
their organizations?  Will folks on X3J14 listen if we
go to this trouble?

  Phil Koopman                koopman@greyhound.ece.cmu.edu   Arpanet
  2525A Wexford Run Rd.
  Wexford, PA  15090
Senior scientist at Harris Semiconductor, and adjunct professor at CMU.
I don't speak for them, and they don't speak for me.