Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a684
From: a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: ANS Forth
Message-ID: <4466@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jan 91 15:11:03 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 37


dcp@world.std.com (David C. Petty) writes:

> We just simply don't agree on whether ANS Forth ought to include whizzy new
> features (like locals).  I say standard Forth is the Forth that has proven
> itself in the user community and they say Forth must be ``improved'' to
> include things that have yet to gain near universal acceptance.

A lot of us find features--such as locals--to be a very useful addition to
Forth.  Since there will be a lot of people using locals, it's nice to have a
standard way of handling them, so that programs--and programmers--are portable.


Let me make an analogy to what I think is your point of view; you can tell me
if it's a bad analogy.

The steel industry has a set of standards for identifying alloys, including
modern high-performance alloys.  This allows steel users to simply specify a
certain alloy for an application. A xxx.yyy.zzz alloy means the same thing to
everyone.

If the standard was developed using your arguments, we'd probably be limited to
basic carbon steel.  "Carbon steel has been good enough for hundreds of years.
We don't need to mess with these 'whizzy new alloys'.  Adding molybdenum alloys
would make the standard too big.  If anyone needs more capabilities, they can
add them to their stock of recipes."

While it's true that carbon steel might be the "core" alloy set and anyone can
add new alloy blends from that, it's not very productive.  If each steel
producer makes its own (non-portable) alloys, users get locked into one
producer.  You have to rewrite all your design tools to switch to a new
producer, or else you have to do all your design work at the lowest level
(specifying the exact requirements of each alloy for every project) instead of
using standard high-level alloy specifications.

Limiting the "core" alloy set to carbon steel is fine for steel alloy
"hackers", but it isn't productive for the industry.