Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!willett!ForthNet From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: ANS FORTH TECHNICAL COMMITTEE Message-ID: <2301.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> Date: 4 Feb 91 12:35:34 GMT Organization: (n.) to be organized. But that's not important right now. Lines: 66 Category 10, Topic 2 Message 308 Sat Feb 02, 1991 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 18:03 CST (Reply to Jan Stout continued) . JS> Do indeed you use that many dpliterals??? My opinion is that the JS>occasional use of doubles shouldn't imply alternative syntax (use JS>of .) that outside the forthcommunity always meant fpformat. I'd JS>say use 0 0 for your 0. or if you've sprayed a lot of 0. in your JS>code define a constant ie 0 0 2CONSTANT D0 and use D0 instead of 0. . No, I don't use many decimal-point literals in my code. Recently I've started using more. I usually do use 0 0 instead of 0. But, I've felt there's been a long tradition of using the dp to signify double precision. I am not persuaded this should be changed to meet the expectations of those "outside the forthcommunity." This hints at two of my philosophical differences with (some of) those advocating a new standard. . First, I'm not very interested in conforming to the standards of other language so that "we" will be better accepted. I may be wrong in this. Jax argues eloquently for the standard from a financial standpoint. I might even use the standard for that very purpose someday. If we want to be better accepted by making Forth look like C or Pascal or Fortran there is a much cheaper, more straight forward shortcut to that goal: just use C or Pascal or Fortran. Bang! An instant solution. If the point of the standard is merely to be able to say "Forth is now an ANSI recognized standard" for political and financial purposes (in which case the technical merits of the standard are unimportant) then the committee has *wasted* a great deal of effort trying for technical excellence. On the other hand, if the committee is rightfully trying for technical excellence, it seems that the political pressures and compromises have been a costly impediment, resulting in what I think Jax called a comfortable saddle camel (ie better than you might expect from a committee, but still not a horse). . Second, didn't Dijkstra complain that other languages were standardized way too soon? Rudolf Flesch in *The Art of Plain Talk* says about the Chinese language: "It is the most grown-up talk in the world. It is the way people speak who started to simplify their language thousands of years ago and have kept at it ever since." He also says (I summarize) that English will never catch up because we became literate and froze the language too soon. I think it is far too soon to "standardize" Forth. When I offer my opinions about ( y x -) versus ( x y -) or decimal points, etc they are merely my current thinking. I am not through thinking. I don't want any of this frozen into a "standard" yet. . However, I am fully convinced there is going to be an ANSI "standard" regardless of how premature I feel it to be. So, I think the important thing now is not to call it *the* standard, but to refer to it as *one of the many competing* standards. Sort of my version of pantheism. So, regarding it as one of the many standards, I can say to the committee "good work - keep it up - the ideas and discussion are useful." I look at it as an expensive to them, cheap to me version of FORML. . As comic relief I'd like to quote from a shareware catalog I got recently: . "*FIGFORTH* - The complete FIG-FORTH language that is an '83 ANSI standard implementation." . -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett. You cannot Reply to the author using email. Please post a follow-up article, or use any instructions the author may have included (USMail addresses, telephone #, whatever). Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp