Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!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: X3J14 Goals
Message-ID: <2688.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 28 Apr 91 03:32:39 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 96

Category 10,  Topic 39
Message 59        Fri Apr 26, 1991
JAX                          at 21:25 PDT
 
JAX4TH, a BASIS-compliant Forth for the Amiga is up and running. I am
currently revising it in order to

         a) complete (ha-ha) the debug cycle;
         b) implement more features;
         c) verify total compliance with the current BASIS.

After this cycle is done, hopefully by mid-summer, I will release JAX4TH
binaries to all ForthNet BBSes for the amusement of Amiga and Forth fans.

In light of the above, and in light of the verbal warfare currently taking
place on the 'net and elsewhere in re: X3J14, I would like to make a few
observations about BASIS 15, which is poised to become dpANS.

1> BASIS 15 works.

BASIS 15 by and large represents a well-factored, *easy-to-implement*,
powerful and extremely transportable Forth. It is transportable to a degree
never seen before in the Forth community, from mainframes to microcontrollers,
largely due to two concepts:

         - Data space is separated from dictionary space;

         - Formal word definitions are divorced from architectural
         dependency as much as was possible within the consensus
         of the participants in the process.

Transportable mechanisms have been established for:

         - file i/o
         - host memory allocation
         - floating point

and many other compatability bugaboos that have plagued Forth programmers and
Forth systems throughout the history of Forth.

2> BASIS 15 is a valid development for Forth.

Some complain that BASIS 15 does not represent their view of Forth. Well, that
is why the Forth community has had to live with the joke, "If you have seen
one Forth, you have seen ... one Forth" for years. BASIS 15 is the logical
outgrowth of the demand for transportable Forth programs.

There are complaints that Forth is not Forth-83, 79-STANDARD, FIG, what have
you. Of course it is not. Don't be ridiculous. If this is a major problem for
anyone, they should go crawl into a cave with a battery-powered laptop and
program in 16 bits until the next ice age.

3> BASIS 15 is pretty much what you get.

If anything is horribly wrong in BASIS 15 I have yet to find it. Furthermore,
the X3J14 team is very exhausted. We have labored mightily and are on the
verge of "giving birth" to a new era in Forth. Certain members of the
community are gathered outside the birthing room casting aspersions on the
legitimacy of the child to be born.

- Bob Berkey has called our proceedings "fraudulent" in a wild ForthNet
posting encouraging people to write to Congress and to write to the President
of the United States to have the Justice Department investigate. I leave it as
an exercise for the reader to judge the validity of such rhetorical excess.

- John Wavrik has suggested we wait a while and let everyone have a chance to
absorb all these new concepts. John is a university professor and can afford
to sit and think: he's paid for it! :-) Let the reader remember that ANS Forth
is actually Forth-87 and is long overdue. Working Forth programmers need this
powerful new standard!

- I have heard prominent members of the Forth community suggest that the
entire proceeding was entirely to FORTH, Inc.'s benefit to the detriment of
the interests of the rest of the community. This is ridiculous and borders on
idiocy. BASIS 15 "spiritually" resembles 83-STANDARD as used under MSDOS, in
the embedded control field, and most particularly, it resembles 83-STANDARD as
"stretched" for UNIX, AmigaDOS and MacFinder, much more than it resembles
polyFORTH.

It is in the interest of every serious Forther to bring these proceedings to
the state of a "terminating computation". Fix what is wrong with the BASIS and
learn to live like adults with workable compromises.

Enough horsefeathers, already. The enemy ain't X3J14. The enemy is the
ingrained tendency of the Forth programmer to take his/her ball and bat and go
home.

"The time to hesitate is through ..." - Jim Morrison

         IMPLEMENT AND DEBUG OR SHUT UP AND MOVE OVER!

-----
This message came from GEnie via willett.  You *cannot* reply to the author
using e-mail.  Please post a follow-up article, or use any instructions
the author may have included (USMail addresses, telephone #, etc.).
Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us _or_ uunet!willett!dwp