Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wang!harvee!esj
From: esj@harvee.UUCP (Eric S Johansson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: ANS TC Magnet for Cont. Ref. Set
Message-ID: <2484416@harvee.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 91 22:28:56 GMT
References: <2284.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> <2756383@harvee.UUCP> <1991Feb12.075739.12678@world.std.com>
Organization: gators 'r us
Lines: 68
X-Version: Rodney's UUCP modules 05/09/90 V1.15

In article <1991Feb12.075739.12678@world.std.com> dcp@world.std.com
> In article <2756383@harvee.UUCP>,
> esj@harvee.UUCP (Eric S Johansson) writes:
> 
> ``the fact that  we can think of problems with a part of the standard is no 
> ``reason to chuck that part.  
> 
> Au contraire... the fact that ``we can think of problems with a part
> of the standard'' is _absolutely_ reason enough to ``chuck'' that
> part.  Only those things that are proven aspects of Forth should be
> standardized as part of ANS Forth (in my heretical opinion).

Where as I assert that only those things that are proven aspects of
many different languages should be standardized as part of ANS
language efforts (not just forth) (in my heretical opinion).

We *CAN NOT* afford to keep on reinventing the wheel in
software development in general and forth specificly.  If a concept
has stood the test of time and has become common practice, then it is
acceptable (IMNSHO) to include it in the forth standard.

For example, there is one word I would like to see added to the standard.
 It is the word OBSOLETE.  It would be used after definitions to mark
them as OBSOLETE and print a warning when ever the word is used.  It
would be most useful to users of forth toolkits to warn them of uage
of interfaces that are going away.  I saw this concept in eiffle.

Usage:

: xyzzy ... ; obsolete

: qwerty ... xyzzy ... ;

when qwerty is compiled, The compiler would print the message like
" qwerty using obsolete word xyzzy"
or some such nonsense.  feedback??

Dave, we have been party to many discussions about the ansi std. 
I respect your opinions (don't always agree but I respect'em)
You meet so many interesting people with so many interesting opinions
here in forthland. :-)

And speaking of interesting opinions, here is another....  read with
a bit of salt :-)

There is one way I could agree to shrinking the ANSI wordset
thereby eliminating all of these controversies over the string or file
or ... wordsets.  Define a standard way of calling C functions from
forth.  Then anyone could use all the functions in libc.a or any other C
library and not need to reinvent the wheel (or words) in forth.
Think about it, interface to C in an standard sequence and all the
issues of strings, files, floating point, networking, GUI are
mostly solved.  Use the C names, with the C specified arguments in a
forth context. real easy.  But I figure this will never fly because
the forth hackers of the world have their egos too wrapped up
in reinventing the wheel in the forth way to get any real work done
and make money using forth.

--- eric 
 
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