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From: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Rebuttal to Mr. Russell Nelson's complaint about SPL
Message-ID: <3997@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-May-87 13:37:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.3997
Posted: Tue May  5 13:37:58 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 7-May-87 05:06:13 EDT
References: <224@helm.UUCP>
Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 21
Summary: SPL is a preprocessor.  Sorry, Dennis.
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:3785 comp.lang.misc:377

In article <224@helm.UUCP> dlbaer@helm.UUCP (Dennis L. Baer) writes:
>         Russ Nelson in a letter dated April 21, 1987 said some things
>about SPL that were uncomplementary. He complained that SPL was a pre-
>processor. SPL is not a preprocessor because the Structured Programming
>Language does not resemble BASIC in its format or in its philosophy.

I am not the same "Nelson" that posted the original complaint, but I
have to agree with Russ.  I downloaded SPR (It was about a year ago?  I
can't recall if I got it from USENET or COMPUSERVE) but anyway it was
on a sight unseen basis (an ARC style archive) - All I had to judge the
package was a glowing description (You know - "new language",
"structured programming", etc.) that did not mention BASIC anywhere.  I
was VERY disappointed to realize that SPR was a BASIC preprocessor (after
unarc'ing and printing the manual).

Let's not pick nits here, either.  SPR is a BASIC preprocessor in
the same sense that "ratfor" is a fortran preprocessor.  Sure, the
enhanced languages are different to some extent, but the programmer
must be aware of the UNDERLYING language, as well.  It is not a true
"translator" in my mind because of how closely tied the base and
enhanced languages are.