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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: <2404.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 21 Feb 91 23:30:50 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 37


 Date: 02-19-91 (09:28)              Number: 1249 of 1262 (Echo)
   To: GARY SMITH                    Refer#: 1225
 From: RAY DUNCAN                      Read: NO
 Subj: ANS FORTH TECHNICAL COMMI     Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
 Conf: FORTH (58)                 Read Type: GENERAL (+)

   Chip Salzenberg writes:
   >"Could someone enlighten me as to the evil of ALSO/ONLY."

 First of all, it was never a part of the Forth-83 standard.  It was
 appended to the standard as an "experimental word set" as a political
 ploy -- to keep Bill Ragsdale (one of the founders of FIG) happy.

 Second of all, ALSO/ONLY was apparently originally conceived of as a
 "Forth-like" (i.e. stack-like) way to control search order, but the
 realization of the concept was brain-damaged.  To wit: there are ways to
 push things onto the search order stack but no way to pop them off; no
 way to interrogate what is currently in the search order stack; no way
 to rearrange the search order stack except by dumping the whole thing
 and starting over; and so on.

 Third of all, ALSO/ONLY is completely incompatible with at least two of
 the commercial Forth systems with the largest installed bases (Forth
 Inc. and LMI).  It seems sort of silly to me to put something into the
 ANSI Forth draft standard --- which is supposed to be founded on
 concensus and common practice --- which will totally break the code of
 thousands of serious Forth programmers and CANNOT be mechanically
 edited/translated from old to new.

 NET/Mail : LMI Forth Board, Los Angeles, CA (213) 306-3530
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