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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Conditional compilation
Message-ID: <9102282007.AA14808@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 27 Feb 91 23:13:15 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Mitch Bradley <wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 27

> I'm curious to know if "common use" is isomorphic with "LMI does it" in this
> case or if there really are other users.  (As I pointed out, Upper Deck
> Systems does it differently).

I don't know of any systems other than LMI using the names ".IF .ELSE .THEN".

In fact, I don't know of any two systems that agree on ANY set of names.

The only set of names that has much chance of multi-system use is
IFTRUE .. OTHERWISE .. IFEND , and that set has the unfortunate property
that OTHERWISE is a well-formed English word, and thus tends to appear
in text comments, confusing the IFTRUE parser.

Everything else being equal, I would go with LMI over Upper Deck Systems,
since I suspect that LMI has at least 10 times as many users as Upper Deck
Systems (this is not intended as a criticism of UDS).

I think that naming consistency is important, but I don't think it is
as important as having the functions you need.  The naming thing is an
annoyance, but lack of functionality can keep you from doing something
you need to do.

If a convenient opportunity arises, I will propose a name change, but I
am worried that raising the issue will open the door for the minimalists
to propose deleting the functions entirely.  I don't want that to happen.

Mitch