waters@viking.DEC (Lester Waters) (09/28/84)
Has anyone heard about TRUE BASIC which is being produced by John Kemeny (one of the original creators of BASIC) and Kurtz? It is supposed to conform to ANSI proposed standards (i.e., be Pascal-like supporting Procedures, etc.). As I understand it, Kurtz is on the ANSI committee. There was an article in a recent Popular Computing (which I haven't seen yet) about it. Does anyone know if the ANSI proposed standard for BASIC is floating around the Arpanet and/or any other network? I would like to get my hands on it. - Lester Waters - WATERS%viking.DEC@DECWRL (Arpa) ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-viking!WATERS (UUCP)
richard@RAND-UNIX.ARPA (10/02/84)
From: Richard Shuford <vortex!richard@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
Re: waters%viking.DEC@decwrl.ARPA, (Lester Waters)
decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-viking!waters, 28 Sept 1984
> Has anyone heard about TRUE BASIC which is being produced by
> John Kemeny (one of the original creators of BASIC) and Kurtz?
> It is supposed to conform to ANSI proposed standards (i.e., be
> Pascal-like supporting Procedures, etc.). As I understand it,
> Kurtz is on the ANSI committee. There was an article in a
> recent !Popular Computing! (which I haven't seen yet) about it.
> Does anyone know if the ANSI proposed standard for BASIC is
> floating around the ARPANET and/or any other network? I would
> like to get my hands on it.
Both Kemeny and Kurtz were the key developers of BASIC at
Dartmouth College in the early 1960's. There are structures like
DO WHILE condition...LOOP and SELECT CASE...CASE x...END SELECT
defined in the draft proposed BASIC standard; True BASIC will
implement them. True BASIC, however, will not be available as a
commercial product for a few more months.
The BASIC standard project exists at this time as the document
"X3J2/84-26: Revised dpANS for the Programming Language BASIC".
(The abbreviation "dpANS" means "draft proposed American National
Standard".) The book is 320 pages long, mostly single-spaced. I
believe that hard copies are available for a nominal fee from:
X3 Secretariat
Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association
Suite 500
311 First St., NW
Washington, DC 20001
There is still disagreement between the X3J2 committee (working on
BASIC) and the X3H3 committee (working on the Graphical Kernel
System) on exactly how ANSI BASIC should implement its graphics
functions.
The Popular Computing article referred to is "True BASIC" by
George Stewart, November 1984, page 95. See also "The Proposed
ANSI BASIC Standard" by Ron Anderson, BYTE, February 1983, page
194, and "On the Way to Standard BASIC" by Thomas Kurtz, BYTE,
June 1982, page 182.faiman@uiucdcsb.UUCP (10/10/84)
There is also an interview with Kemeny and Kurtz in the October (I think) 1984 issue of PC World. Mike Faiman