wmb@pi.Eng.Sun.COM (Mitch Bradley) (06/02/90)
> John Wavrik writes, regarding ANS Forth ... > just waiting for someone to tell us he sees light at the end of the > tunnel! Okay, here goes: I see light at the end of the tunnel. Seriously, I am quite pleased at the current state of affairs. All of the "stupid quibbles", like "NOT" and "/", have been resolved in a workable fashion (i.e. precisely-defined standard words are provided for all reasonable behaviors, so everybody can do what they need to do, and the controversial names are left loosely defined so that vendors don't refuse to implement the standard on "cost of compliance" grounds). Important and *necessary* extension packages are defined, including file access, floating point, memory allocation, strings, search order, and error handling. These are optional, so nobody is forced to implement them, but at least there will no longer be one million incompatible variants of stuff that many people eventually end up needing. Usage restrictions on standard words have been articulated, so now it is possible to KNOW what you can depend on, instead of having to guess. Admittedly, there are some restrictions that keep me from writing certain programs portably (mostly in the area of syntactic extensions, or "mucking around in the kernel"), but this is nothing new. Such programs have ALWAYS been system-dependent (yes, I know that you could do a lot of neat stuff as long as you restricted yourself to FIG Forth, but FIG Forth NEVER was the only Forth, and hasn't even been all that important for over 8 years). All in all, I think ANS Forth, as it stands RIGHT NOW (Basis 12), is a GOOD THING. I'm going to vote for it. I'm proud to have been involved. Admittedly, there are a few things that I would have done a bit differently, had I been the ANS Forth Dictator. Fortunately, I am not the Dictator, and neither is anybody else. The result is a compromise. It's a good compromise, and I can live with it. Many conflicting interests were well and fairly represented. The result is a language that I will be happy to use. Mitch Bradley
dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) (06/04/90)
In <9006012332.AA21405@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) writes: > Seriously, I am quite pleased at the current state of affairs. > > All of the "stupid quibbles", like "NOT" and "/", have been resolved in > a workable fashion . . . Important and *necessary* extension packages > are defined . . . Usage restrictions on standard words have been > articulated . . . All in all, I think ANS Forth, as it stands RIGHT > NOW (Basis 12), is a GOOD THING. I'm going to vote for it. . . . > The result is a language that I will be happy to use. Ok, but how widespread is that feeling? How many issues are left on the table, what kinds of issues are they and how many issues are already known to be pending? -Doug --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) (06/04/90)
> > Seriously, I am quite pleased at the current state of affairs. > Ok, but how widespread is that feeling? The primary metric that the technical subcommittee used to prioritize their work was the notion of "burning issues". A "burning issue" is something that one or more voting members feel so strongly about that they will vote against the standard if the issue is not resolved to their satisfaction. This is a "big stick", since the CBEMA rules require that the final vote on the standard as a whole must be UNANIMOUS. (To become a voting member, one must be present at 2 consecutive meetings and pay a membership fee ~$250 to CBEMA. To remain a voting member, you must then attend at least every other meeting.) Relative to that metric, the answer to the question is that the recent meeting put to rest most of the burning issues. This implies that the committee, by and large, is ready to vote for the draft standard "as is". (I am speaking of the technical content and intent of Basis12; the document itself has to recast in a different format, and cleaned up here and there, hopefully without altering the technical intent). It does not mean that everybody is overjoyed with every detail, but it does mean that the thing as a whole is pretty much *acceptable* to nearly everybody. This sounds like a weak statement, but believe me, it's not! Getting Forth programmers, and especially the highly-opinionated types who are willing to endure the rigors of the standardization process, to agree on ANYTHING is quite a feat. If I can find time in the next few weeks, I'll try to post a list of some of the "non-burning" issues that are still on the table. Mitch Bradley
dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) (06/10/90)
> If I can find time in the next few weeks, I'll try to post a list of > some of the "non-burning" issues that are still on the table. I hope so! Maybe some of the other committee members could pitch in too? -Doug --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]