Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Basis for my misgivings about the change of VOCABULARY.... Message-ID: <9011022134.AA23787@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 1 Nov 90 17:22:16 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Mitch Bradley Organization: The Internet Lines: 41 > [ Frank Earl writes ... ] > the use- > > nnn VOCABULARY > > is non-compliant with the standards and, thus CANNOT claim to be 79/83 > standard ... how many of the dialects use the non-compilant definition 1) It's not just the stack diagram of VOCABULARY that is in question. The other consideration is the behavior of word lists defined by vocabulary. FIG Forth: after the vocabulary is searched, its parent vocabulary is searched, and so on. ("chain to parent") Forth 79: after the vocabulary is searched, the FORTH vocabulary is searched. ("chain to FORTH") Forth 83: unspecified, but most implementations adopt the ALSO/ ONLY experimental proposal, in which a run-time list of vocabularies controls the search order. polyFORTH: I'm not sure of the exact details, but I know it's different from any of the above. Consequently, even if one is willing to ignore the systems which require a numeric argument to VOCABULARY , the semantic meaning is inconsistent among existing standards. > If there are only a few (even if they are major vendors' products) why > was the "compromise" made in the first place? According to ANSI rules, major vendors cannot be so easily dismissed. ANSI rules require that a proposed standard be acceptable to existing major vendors. Don't pin me down on the details of this, because I don't know them, but I do know that what I just said is basically true. If someone at Forth, Inc. is listening (Dennis?), perhaps they could ask Elizabeth to clarify this point. Mitch