Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!eagle!icdoc!ivax!cdsm
From: cdsm@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Chris Moss)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: BSI Prolog terms of reference
Message-ID: <256@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 14 Apr 88 14:43:53 GMT
References: <831@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <249@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> <845@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Sender: news@doc.ic.ac.uk
Reply-To: cdsm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Chris Moss)
Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK.
Lines: 46
Keywords: promises

In article <845@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>The phrase "as described in" is perhaps ambiguous.
>Reading 1:
>	"Edinburgh Prolog (that is, exactly what is in Clocksin & Mellish)".
>Reading 2:
>	"Edinburgh Prolog (that is, the dialects that Clocksin & Mellish
>	refer to and partly describe)".
>Since C&M is far too vague about details to serve as the basis for a standard,
>I find reading 2 the most plausible one.

I don't find Reading 2 any more plausible than my original.

"Clocksin and Mellish were trying to describe what was going on at
Edinburgh. Therefore one takes not what they said but what they were
trying to say, which is obviously...  (insert one's own prejudice)"

Unfortunately, since the breakup of the original Edinburgh group centred 
round the DEC10 implementation there has really been no coherence at all.
Poplog, NIP, Prolog-X all come from the right stable but vary in many
details. To those further afield it is even more confusing.
	
>It is very easy to deny that the early work was based on Edinburgh Prolog:
>some of the early stuff looked uncommonly like Sigma Prolog.  Indeed,
>document PS/69 (dated 6 June 1985) explicitly says that the standard was
>now to be based on micro-PROLOG as well as C&M.

I work in the same establishment as the authors of SigmaProlog.
I'm not going to start badmouthing them on the net.
But really Richard, you do like to have your cake and eat it too.
Frank McCabe gave up the chairmanship of the syntax committee last summer
when all he had produced was principles and sketches, leaving me to
try to put together a document which was acceptable to all. So for
the last 9 months I've been trying to do that. Many of his ideas 
are worth listening to and some of them have problems. But when all
sides adopt a dog in the manger attitude one will never get anywhere.

Anyway all this is history. It looks as if it's ISO Prolog that will
get the attention in future. This opens up the field to far more input
and introduces more problems, too. So PS/69 as well as earlier statements
are effectively dead as far as I can see. 

I don't object to you arguing for the standard to be based on Quintus.
You might be considered to be failing your employers if you didn't.
But don't presume that Quintus is in a uniquely priviledged position.

Chris.