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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: ANS FORTH TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Message-ID: <2283.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 27 Jan 91 22:36:11 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 68

Category 10,  Topic 2
Message 291       Sun Jan 27, 1991
F.SERGEANT [Frank]           at 14:58 CST
 
 Elizabeth Rather> Once again, stand up and be counted:  how do you 
                 > vote?
 Well, since you asked, I'll make a few comments.
 >COLROW
   I don't like the name.  I presume it is to set a cursor  position on the
screen.  I prefer the arguments to be ( row col - )  rather than ( col row -
).  I could go along with the name TAB for  this.  Why not AT?  Anyway, let's
not require it!  If possible, let's  remove it altogether. If it must be kept,
let's not use the ugly name.
 >LEX & the string word set.  
   Let's remove them altogether.
 >2DROP, 2DUP, 2OVER, 2SWAP, etc. 
   I don't feel strongly about where these are put.  In general I feel  the
less in the core wordset the better.  I can live with them either  place.  And
yes, certainly, I would ordinarily use them even in 32-bit  systems.
 >ALIGN etc
   Again I have no strong feeling here, so I give my default advice,  although
weakly: take it out of the standard if possible; at least take  it out of the
core.   
 >Input Stream wordset with #TIB, etc.
   Ditto.  See default advice above, but with lower volume.  (I don't 
particularly object, in other words.)
 >Wavrik about xBRANCH words (they aren't in most Forth systems anyway
   Regarding this and also Wil's comments about "industrial strength  Forths"
not having or wanting them, I guess I miss the point.  Maybe  someone would
explain what is done instead?  I call 'em  branch and  0branch in my system. 
Don't even the industrial strength Forths have  conditional and unconditional
branch primitives?  So (no pun intended)  I guess the question is whether the
control structure primitives should  be specified in the standard, or just the
high-level actions of IF ELSE  THEN BEGIN UNTIL etc.  I rather liked (what I
think Wil was suggesting)  the idea of eliminating the need for the programmer
to know how many  stack items these words kept on the stack at compile time. 
Whether SO  or BUT or whatever should be part of the standard, I don't know. 
I'd  be happy for someone to post a discussion and explanation of all this 
that I could understand.
 >"This Standard does not require that each word be provided in 
 > executable form.
   This may the thing I like most (dislike least, perhaps) about the  ANSI
standard.  It's the way I deal with DO LOOP in Pygmy.  (Thanks to  Robert
Berkey) it's available in source form to load for anyone who  wants it, but it
doesn't burden my system.
  >ONLY/ALSO
   I don't use 'em, so throw them out.  Throw out WORDLIST and that  other
one.  Put back VOCABULARY in an optional wordset and say it is  implementation
dependent.
  > Toronto
   I want words to be case sensitive.  I want the decimal point to  indicate
double precision (not floating point).  Let's standardize  BLOCK as returning
an address of some sort that refers to a 1024 byte  area, but leave its
relationship to disks, files, and the operating  system implementation
specific.  Remove the file handling words from  the standard altogether.
  ( u) FOR ...  NEXT
   Specify that when u is zero the body of the loop is *not* executed  at all.
Otherwise, the body is executed u times (not u+1 times).
  Division
   Leave it implementation dependent.
  CATCH & THROW
   Leave 'em out of the standard.
  -- Frank
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