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From: S47852EF@ETSUACAD.BITNET ("Frank C. Earl")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re-inventing the wheel.
Message-ID: <9102211449.AA20733@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 20 Feb 91 19:52:53 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: "Frank C. Earl" <S47852EF%ETSUACAD.BITNET@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39

Mitch,


I *LIKE* that statement that you made about the "reinventing of the wheel"
BEING ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH FORTH'S POPULARITY...   I, TOO, HAVE SEEN AL
too many hoky implementations purporting to be 79-standard/83-standard and
really only barely meeting the rquirements of those standards (or, even
resembling a Forth at all!!)

I may not like what is rumored to be in the BASIS - I'm bothered a little by
the rationale for the use of WORDSET in lieu of VOCABULARY; what I heard of
of the reasons given for the change there simply didn't seem to be enough for
my liking...   Not to mention the forms of signed division (We now need the
code for both forms in the dictionary instead of one- or so I understand it to
be); they both give incorrect answers in the third quadrant (both numbers
negative...) the MOD part of /MOD for either algorithm is NEGATIVE when it
should be positive (which is mathematically wrong...).

[ Don't get this wrong...   I'm not flogging dead horses here; I'm just
  mentioning some of my misgivings with what I know by way of what has been
  said on the net (My attempt at getting the BASIS 14 document vanished into
  the Infamous-Big-Bit-Bucket (IBBB) on the net and I simply don't have a
  concrete idea of exactly WHAT the BASIS really is right now...).  ]


Despite this, if the dpANS is turned into ANS Forth, I'll use it...
(I may not like it, but I'll use it...)
If anything, to just avoid re-inventing the wheel as much as I possibly can
:)


Thanks,

Frank C. Earl

Bitnet   :  s47852ef@etsuacad
Internet :  s47852ef@etsuacad.etsu.edu

( For quicker reply, send all flames to /dev/null...   ;)