amos@nsta.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (08/12/87)
It seems that support, rather than a written standard, is what makes a language 'standard'. If a language is to be kept from diverging into many different dialects, someone has to do the keeping - there should be a central location for gripes, updates, etc. Just compare the fate of Ada, C and Modula-2 that have such caretakers, vs. Fortran, Pascal and Basic that do not, even though the latter have ANSI or ISO standards. -- Amos Shapir (My other cpu is a NS32532) National Semiconductor (Israel) 6 Maskit st. P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 amos%nsta@nsc.com @{hplabs,pyramid,sun,decwrl} 34 48 E / 32 10 N