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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: PUZZLES AND PROBLEMS
Message-ID: <1556.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 20 Aug 90 00:41:34 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 35

Category 3,  Topic 35
Message 141       Sat Aug 18, 1990
W.BADEN1 [Wil]               at 22:35 PDT
 
 Nick Janow,

 The convention of Initial Capital Not Expecting Anything On The
 Stack, and initial minuscule expecting something, is analogous to
 natural language.  Forth "sentences" have a syntax similar to
 classical Latin, or to Japanese -- subject and object first, verb
 last.  "Johannes Mariam amat," not "johannes mariam Amat."  Thus
 complete thoughts in Forth, i.e., sentences, will begin with a
 capital letter, and the last word, which will be like a verb, will
 be lower case. E.g., "Buffer 80 expect", "Name count type"

 Forth words with stack effect ( -- ) should begin with a capital
 because they are complete one-word sentences.  Note that they should
 be followed by extra-space because the stack status will be the same
 as it had been.

 Another precedent is that English used to and German still does
 capitalize all nouns as well as the first letter of a sentence.
 Words that do not expect anything on the stack are like nouns or are
 one-word sentences.

 Pascal and C should observe the opposite convention because of their
 syntax for complete statements other than assignment statements.

 Seven years of experimentation has convinced me that this
 convention yields better looking code.

 There will always be someone who disagrees, though.
-----
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