anderson@uwvax.ARPA (02/12/84)
There have been several messages recently voicing dissatis-
faction with the extent of the changes in the FORTH-83 pro-
posal. While I appreciate the difficulties that these
changes might cause, I feel that the following points should
not be overlooked:
1) In terms of widespread use, FORTH is relatively new.
Its underlying concepts are novel, and some of its
design weaknesses became apparent only with time. I
don't think what we have is good enough to consider
casting it in stone. I also think that some sets of
extensions (not in the nucleus) should be proposed and
standardized.
2) The main idea of the FORTH philosophy (as I see it) is
that you are free to fashion your own programming
environment, or hierarchy of environments, using FORTH
as the nucleus. In particular you can simulate the
environment provided by any previous version of FORTH
by defining a vocabulary that sits on top of the newer
FORTH and redefines (to their original meanings) what-
ever words were changed.
These remarks are not meant to endorse FORTH-83, which I
haven't read, but only to support the idea of an evolving
standard. As an aside, I am working on extensions to FORTH
for doing computer music. These involve concurrent
processes, and some object-type structures. I would like to
hear from anyone interested in this.
David Anderson (uwvax!anderson)
U. of Wisconsin Comp. Sci.