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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Impact of standards
Message-ID: <9102041441.AA19066@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 4 Feb 91 07:46:31 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

> A "standard" implies much more than this.  If you build a house, and the
> electrical wiring does not meet the standard code of wiring practice, the
> installer can be jailed, or at the very least have his license to practice
> revoked.
>
> We do we Forthers want our standard to be placed in this interval?

There is no enforcement organization to take such drastic measures with
respect to ANS Forth standard.

The practical effect of ANS Forth, if it happens, will be to make Forth
more "legitimate", to reduce the amount of divergence in the area of
popular extensions, and to better document the range of Forth usage
which is indeed portable (many things which people currently think are
portable are not actually portable outside a restricted subset of Forth
implementations).

Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM