Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!ForthNet
From: ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: ANS TC Magnet for Division
Message-ID: <1388.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jul 90 03:01:49 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 40


 Date: 07-22-90 (06:07)              Number: 445 (Echo)
   To: R.BERKEY [ROBERT]             Refer#: 441
 From: ZAFAR ESSAK                     Read: NO
 Subj: ANS TC MAGNET FOR DIVISIO     Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE

 All this discussion regarding the handling of division in Forth is 
 important even if at times it wears out one's interest.  The Forth 
 language is a tremendous tool for developing applications as well as 
 exploring the intricacies of hardware structure.  To maintain the 
 "public" interest in using Forth for application development the ANSI 
 Standards effort is going to have to make some hard decisions between 
 trying to compromise between what has been done in past implementations 
 of Forth and answering what is correct.  I have followed discussions of 
 division in Forth for years and have longed for resolution based on 
 mathematically correct criteria.  Having already learnt a language 
 doesn't make me scared of learning a little more.  But I am quite 
 scared of a language based on the need to please individuals at the 
 expense of pursuing knowledge and understanding.  One can even justify 
 the cost of changes to an application based on CORRECTNESS but not 
 based on appeasing others. 

 I do appreciate the amount of effort individuals are expending on the 
 ANSI Standard and some of the ideas and discussions on-line have 
 demonstrated some nice approaches to simplification of programming. 
 However, if the prime motivation of the committee is to find the areas 
 of compromise then maybe a more appropriate name for the resulting 
 language would be COMPOST, and it might possibly provide fertile ground 
 for future development.  Unfortunately such an approach may cause 
 application developers to look elsewhere for required transportability 
 or convince them to support a single like-minded vendor. 

 Zafar. 
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