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From: fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Universal OS (was Re: Survey of
Message-ID: <1559@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 3 May 88 17:07:32 GMT
References: <768@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 27

From article <768@l.cc.purdue.edu>, by cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin):
> 
> ....  This means that the user must be
> able to use notation which he considers easy to read, as long as that
> notation is not already coopted, and in some cases it might be necessary
> to change  existing notation.  This is done in mathematics all the time,
>  and does not lead to problems.

You had a sympathetic ear until this last sentence.  There are in fact
many folks - myself among them - who do exactly what you asked for.
But even within mathematics, there is no complete agreement.  Certainly,
within some subfield of analysis one might find a completely agreed
upon language.

But this is not necessarily true in another subfield.  What is done in
mathematics is that some definitions and local conventions are made.
This causes no problems for the human who is quite capable of semantic
shifting of this sort.  But local idioms are real hard for the compilers
to generate code for because they need special information.  I agree
that this is desirable - but as of this point, we can hardly formally
define what a computation is and what is computable.

I'd hate to see you try to get into defining Lebesgue integration for
your PC. :-)-- 
Steve Stevenson                            fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     fpst@clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            comp.parallel
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell