Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: BSI syntax
Message-ID: <736@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 88 02:38:45 GMT
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 18

Chris Moss's recent posting on the syntax part of the BSI Prolog SubStandard
deserves a detailed response, which I intend to provide in the coming week.
For the record, here's a brief response:
	(1) about half of the programs I have ever written would not be
	    accepted by a BSI-compatible reader.
	(2) they've made several changes to operators.  Amongst other things,
	    a postfix operator cannot be any other kind of operator as well,
	    but another change they made means that this restriction is
	    pointless.
	(3) The attempt to describe Prolog control structures as *syntax*
	    is fundamentally misdirected.
	(4) The basic structure of the BSI approach to syntax has been
	    to cut the Gordian Goose.  That is, instead of regarding the
	    (actually rather low) diversity of Prolog syntax as a an
	    opportunity to be solved by making the language more powerful
	    (e.g. having a table-driven tokeniser), it has been treated as
	    a problem to be solved by inventing a new, more restricted,
	    language.