HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ets@wrkgrp.COM (Edward T Spire)
Subject: Re: PARSE wishlist/brainstorming
Organization: The Workstation Group
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 15:39:24 GMT

ophof@SERVER.UWINDSOR.CA (Scott Ophof) writes:
: ...
: >: One of the negatives that bothers me is that the customary
: >: convention uses STEM.0 to hold the dimension.  Whoever
: >: invented that was probably not a mathematician nor a C
: >: programmer.  Element zero of an array is wanted by some
: >: people.
: 
: I *like* the imho uncomplicated idea of an array starting at 1 with
: the number of elements in element 0. I find it a quite UNsurprising
: setup.  The concept of "first element is number 0" bothers *me*...

Yes, Humans and REXX programmers (unlike Mathematicians and
C programmers) naturally start counting with 1, not 0.

-Ed

ps:  Scott's posting appears to attribute the above arguement to Anders
(or maybe to myself).  The above arguement comes from another
member of the ANSI committee.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Date:         Sat, 29 Aug 1992 07:09:37 PDT
From:         Dave Gomberg <GOMBERG@UCSFVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Eric's question
              29 Aug 1992 05:05:37 LCL from <anders@LISE3.LISE.UNIT.NO>

I hope you don't feel excessively flamed by this, and it is not my
intent to dispute your right to your opinions, but I was trying to
figure out WHY I reacted so negatively to your postings.  It is
because I find them very hard to read, mostly because of their length.
I have never considered wanting to suppress mail from someone before,
but I find myself tempted now.  If you could be more succinct, it would
help me.  It might help others, I don't know.  But I think it would
help to sell your ideas.  Remember what I said about your long posting.
I rarely post more than a screen, and I don't think there is less meat
in my postings.  If you want to experiment, we could try that (you could
send me shortened versions and I could say if they were better for me
or not).  Whatever you think.   But I don't have the energy for hundreds
of lines.   Dave
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
From: eric@sejnet.sunet.se (Eric Thomas)
Subject: Re: Blanks, REXX, and portability...
Reply-To: ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE
Organization: SUNET, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 17:55:21 GMT

In article <ANDERS.92Aug27063035@lise3.lise.unit.no>, anders@lise3.lise.unit.no (Anders Christensen) writes:
> When taking from an ASCII to an EBCDIC system (or vice versa), you
> _must_ translate the contents. The clue it that *you* don't parse on
> Tab, the *computer* (i.e. the rexx interpreter) parses on Tab,
> depending on the common customs of the host operating system. So
> instead of forcing you, as a user to have to take care of the Tabs,
> the computer (i.e. the Rexx interpreter) should handle it. The
> interpreter can only do that if it knows what is whitespace and what
> is not whitespace for your particular system.

Ok, time for the usual stupid question. Say I have a program that does:

                  Parse var line ':'tagname'.'value' :'line

Say I run that program on an ASCII system which recognize the 20-odd types of
blanks Otto showed in his posting. Where does my 'value' variable end, when the
interpreter encounters a SPACE followed by colon (ancient, despicable, evil
EBCDIC-type behaviour, surely that must not be the case), or also when it
encounters TAB followed by colon (nice, modern ASCII-type behaviour which
happens to break the program because that is not what the programmer wanted
and thought the interpreter would do).

In either case you have a problem. If the blank in the search string only
stands for SPACE, it is very difficult to indicate that you want any of the 20+
white space characters to match. You would almost need a new WSPARSE command,
and WSPOS, and so on. If on the other hand the blank stands for any white space
character, you have no way in the language to halt on just a SPACE when you
need to do that. OPTIONS is not a solution, a given program may well need both
functions very often and switching OPTIONS statements is at best impractical.

  Eric
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
From: omitchel@fenris.claremont.edu (the mathenator)
Subject: FAQ???
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont CA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:43:24 GMT

I was wondering if there is a FAQ planned for this newsgroup.
Ocie Mitchell
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: amca@matilda.vut.edu.au (Alasdair McAndrew)
Subject: Logo under X-windows
Organization: Victoria University of Technology
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 02:48:11 GMT

Does anybody know if there exists an implementation of Logo to run under 
X-windows? Commercial or public domain (or shareware); I'm just
interested to know if such a beast exists, and if so, where to get it.

Thanks in advance,

Alasdair McAndrew
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: Logo under X-windows
Date: 4 Sep 1992 13:05:31 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu


You can try Berkeley Logo.  Anonymous ftp to anarres.cs.berkeley.edu
and get the file pub/ucblogo.tar.Z
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Lego/Logo Postings
From: jadavenport@idicl1.idi.battelle.org
Date: 31 Aug 92 11:45:59 EST
Organization: IDI-Dublin
Nntp-Posting-User: raudabaugh

Hi.  I've just begun following this group recently and have found the topics
very interesting.  I am primarily interested in providing educational tools
and opportunities for my son to use and Logo looks very promising.

Anyways, since my son loves to play with Leggo I called up Leggo Dacta and
asked for their information packet which was written about here recently.
I spoke with a very nice woman named Kris who promised to send me some
information.  She asked how I had heard about the product and I attempted to
explain a little about the Logo newsgroup.  I told her that I could send her
hard copy of the postings about it.  Unfortunately, when I went back to find
them for her they had already rolled off of the server I use.  I would
appreciate it if someone else could mail them to me so I could forward them on
to Lego.

Thanks,
Jim Davenport
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Davenport, Senior Development Manager, Information Dimensions, Inc.
jadavenport@idicl1.idi.battelle.org
As far as I know, I don't have any opinions.
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: Dynamic scope (was Re: Future of Logo)
Date: 25 Aug 1992 17:26:09 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

dorai@cs.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram) writes:
>I don't understand the big pain in the neck part.  Is it the notion of
>lexical scope in itself, or is it the way to get it in Object Logo
>that is a big pain?

Lexical scope itself.  Or perhaps I should say, the incompatibility of
lexical scope with other aspects of Logo.  I think lexical scope is fine
in Scheme, for example, where it combines with first-class functions and
a heavy use of macros so that you can do anything you want to do.

In Logo, without first-class functions, it's common to use "first-class
expressions" to achieve the same goal.  That is, if you want to write a
higher-order function like MAP, what you pass as an argument is a list
containing an expression, which then gets RUN repeatedly by MAP.  That
expression must have access to the local variables of whatever procedure
called MAP.

Object Logo does provide ways to get dynamic scope by asking for it
explicitly, but that means that the Object Logo user has to have a pretty
sophisticated understanding of scope rules to know when to ask.  (And to
be fair, part of my annoyance is that until quite recently the feature
about asking for dynamic scope didn't really work!)

I could go on for a while but we had a discussion of this in the
newsgroup not long ago so maybe we should continue by mail if you
want to pursue it.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: dal3@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (dale.e.parson)
Subject: Cuisenaire rods & puzzles
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:26:28 GMT

I received a couple of requests for the Cuisenaire rod puzzle
book & address that I previously posted:

"Spatial Problem Solving with Cuisenaire Rods" by
Parricia Davidson & Robert Willcott, published by

Cuisenaire Co. of America
12 Church St.
New Rochelle, NY 10801

My copy of the book cost $8 at a homeschool conference.

Dale Parson, Bell Labs, dale@mhcnet.att.com

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
|    "These words are too solid, they don't move fast enough           |
|     to catch the blur in the brain that flies by, and is gone..."    |
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
|     Suzanne Vega                                                     |
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: matt@volga.Berkeley.EDU (Matt Wright)
Subject: Re: LOGO has saved the day :>
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 02:36:22 GMT

In article <FURRY.92Aug20145301@frabjous.hitl.washington.edu> furry@hitl.washington.edu writes:
->I agree.  While I don't exactly have a graphics library in my version of
->xlisp, if I did I imagine writing a LOGO interpreter in Lisp would be
->easier than in any other language.

Here at U.C. Berkeley, we ask students to write (not from scratch, but still
they do a lot of the work) a Logo interpreter in Scheme in our *first
semester* programming course.  (It doesn't do catch/throw or turtle
graphics, but it's still pretty amazing.)

->Conceptually, these two have *very* much in common and are a better
->foundation for programming expertise than anything else out there.  Future
->languages (visual and otherwise) will bear more resemblance to Lisp and LOGO
->than to any other existing computer language.

I agree entirely.

-Matt
From: dorai@cs.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: Dynamic scope (was Re: Future of Logo)
Date: 24 Aug 1992 03:20:30 GMT
Organization: Rice University, Houston

In article <15rdkuINNb3f@agate.berkeley.edu> bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>But I wasn't thinking of the case of name conflicts.  Instead, I was thinking
>about the situation in which all variables have distinct names.  In that case,
>as I suggested, the variables available to procedure B under lexical scope
>are a subset of the ones available to it under dynamic scope.  Under lexical
>scope it has the free variables and its own variables; under dynamic scope it
>also has those of procedure A.
>
>This situation is in contrast with what happens in Scheme, where lexical
>scope sometimes gives you access to extra variables, namely, when you use
>a procedure that was defined inside another one, like this:
>
>But Logo doesn't have lambda, and so lexical scope merely restricts the
>available sources of variables.  (Same in C and Pascal.)
[deleted]

This may be a naive question, but here it is for what it's worth: Are
there variants of Logo that use lexical scope?

--d
-- 

dorai@titan.rice.edu   !    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
dorai@owlnet.rice.edu  !      it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: color animation in Object Logo 
From: borbor@divsun.unige.ch (Boris Borcic)
Date: 31 Aug 92 14:20:53 +0200
Followup-To: comp.lang.logo
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland

By any chance, did someone work out the MacTraps interface
to Color QuickDraw in Object Logo ? I would like to do some
color palette animation (the application I have in mind is
the simulation of Rubick cubes and analogues) and I would
be very grateful if I could skip writing an interface.

I am using 2.51r2.

Also, is there a home archive site for Object Logo utilities ?

(this might be a FAQ, but the distribution of comp.lang.logo
to our site is very recent; how recent (old) is this newsgroup
BTW ?)

Regards,

Boris Borcic - borbor@divsun.unige.ch
From: eirvine@metz.une.edu.au (Edward Irvine, , ,(Oz) 067 73 2039)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: LOGO has saved the day :>
Date: 26 Aug 92 06:48:12 GMT
Reply-To: eirvine@metz.une.edu.au
Originator: eirvine@metz.une.edu.au

I remeber that my programming fluency took a big leap merely
by learning a second language.  That is, learning a second
language (C) drastically improved my competence in the first 
(Fortran 77).  The important thing was that the two were a 
bit different.

Anyone else remember a similar experience?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


But what if the whole thing is conscious ?           eirvine@metz.une.edu.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: goldberg@eldyn.gsfc.nasa.gov (Patti Twigg)
Subject: difference between LOGO Writer and LOGO
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Greenbelt, MD, USA
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 18:35:00 GMT

Well ,the subject line says it all. Thanks for any help.
                               Patti Twigg
                              STPAT@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Berkeley Logo version 2.6
Date: 27 Aug 1992 04:28:03 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

A new alpha test release (version 2.6) of Berkeley Logo is now
available by anonymous FTP.  "Alpha test" means that I know there are
bugs in it!  But you're welcome to try it if you understand that.
I'm happy to get bug reports but I don't promise anything.

The new version fixes bugs that were reported to me in version 2.5,
and also implements tail recursion elimination, which should allow
larger programs to fit in smaller machines.  A very likely side effect
is that you may get misleading error messages (attributing the error
to the wrong procedure, for example); I'd like to know about these.

Users of version 2.5 under Unix should note that the new version does
not create a graphics window until the first graphics instruction is
entered, so don't panic when you start it up.

FTP to anarres.cs.berkeley.edu and get any of the following files:

pub/logo.tar.Z		Unix sources and documentation
pub/ucblogo.zip		PC version, PKZIP form, including executable BL.EXE
pub/ucblogo.sit.hqx	Mac version, StuffIt/BinHex form, w/ executable Logo
pub/usermanual		Just the documentation file.
pub/csls.tar.Z		Logo programs from _Computer Science Logo Style_

You're on your own for the unpacking software.

Advantages of Berkeley Logo:

	* It's free.

	* It comes with source files (in C).

	* Logo programs are completely compatible among Unix, PC, and Mac.

Disadvantages of Berkeley Logo:

	* It's pretty slow.

	* It doesn't do anything fancy about graphics.  (One turtle.)

	* It still has bugs.  In particular, it runs out of memory easily.

If you don't have FTP access, but can read a 3.5-inch disk, send me
$2.50 to cover costs and tell me whether you want the Mac or the PC
version (or send $5.00 for both) and I'll send you a disk.

				Brian Harvey
				2634 Virginia St
				Berkeley, CA  94709
From: mengel@dcdmwm.fnal.gov (Marc W. Mengel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: Logo under X-windows
Date: 4 Sep 92 15:21:27 GMT

Or you can get any of the older Tektronix terminal Logo's, and run
them in a Tek emulation xterm window...
-------
Marc Mengel
mengel@fnal.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: lusk@donner.mcs.anl.gov (Rusty Lusk)
Subject: Re: Looking for logo via ftp
Reply-To: lusk@donner.mcs.anl.gov (Rusty Lusk)
Organization: Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, Illinois
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 13:59:37 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.231128.418@altair.selu.edu>, fcs$1224@altair.selu.edu writes:
>Can someone tell me where there is a site from which I can
>obtain a copy of logo which will run on an IBM PC via 
>anonymous ftp?
>

Everything you want (well, almost everything) is at 

   cher.media.mit.edu

in pub/comp.lang.logo/programs

There are at least 3 logos there that will run on a PC.

-- 
Regards,
Rusty Lusk
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: weberwu@inf.fu-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff)
Subject: Re: IBM LOGO and German Logos 
Reply-To: dww@inf.fu-berlin.de
Organization: Free University of Berlin
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 14:37:56 GMT

A4422DAB@vm.univie.ac.at (Erich Neuwirth) writes:

>as far as i have read no one yet mentioned IBM LOGO.
>it not in IBMs catalog any more, but if you press them hard enough
>they might be willing to sell it to you nevertheless.
Nyet.
I had a spate of letters and calls with the Itty Bittys about this
last year. They refuse to sell further copies, won't let me make
my own copies of the interpreter, and won't sell me the license so
that I could run with it myself. Colleagues had built a German
language interface for it, but IBM refuses to give them permission
to use the IBM-LOGO. So it sits, gathering dust. :-(

In Germany we now have:

iwt-logo for Atari, APple and Commodore : okay
krs-logo for PC (load of trash, but they assure me that a new version
         is coming :-)
"Logo fuer den PC" at Duemmelr's Verlag that can do 80 columns, VGA colors,
         has menues that pop-down and use the mouse, etc. Still a few nasty
         bugs out there, but the author says he's working on them.
LogoWriter has been "Germanized", seems pretty neat but we've just started
         testing.

  
We're anxious to start testing the PD Unix stuff, as most Berlin
schools were forced politically to purchase Unix boxes :-(.

That's the news from here.  
-- 
Debora Weber-Wulff                       dww@inf.fu-berlin.de
ZI Fachdidaktiken, Did. der Informatik   +49 30 838 6334
Habelschwerdter Allee 45                 (INCLUDE "standard.disclaimer")
D-W-1000 Berlin 33                       (PRINTN (WITTY-MESSAGE TODAY))
From: v104n55k@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (David I Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Time and Date in Quintus P.
Date: 3 Sep 92 23:04:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Sep3.201023.6191@tom.rz.uni-passau.de>, baier@forwiss.uni-passau.de (Joern Baier) writes...
>Hi!
> 
>For an application I need the time and date in Quintus Prolog. I wrote a
>small predicate date/1 but I'm not content with it, because I have to
>create an extra file. How can I get a random number in PROLOG to create
>unique file names?
>The main problem is that 'unix(system(date))' sends its output directly
>to the user, regardless of the current output.
> 
>I enclose the protocol of a session below.
> 
>Thanx in advance,
>			Joern
>-------------------------------Cut here!------------------------------
>gandalf:~/prolog/dp 103> prolog
> 
>Quintus Prolog Release 2.5.1 (DECstation 3100, Ultrix 3.1)
>| ?-  tell(test_2),current_output(O),unix(system(date)),told.
>Thu Sep  3 22:01:06 MET DST 1992
> 

Check out your library files. In version 3.1.1, there are predicates for 
dates (date.pl) and random number generators (random.pl). I think these
may be in your directory already. You'll have to look in these library
files to see which predicates you'll need.

Dave
From: billaud@greco-prog.fr (Michel BILLAUD)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Help on problem needed!
Keywords: help
Date: 28 Aug 92 08:55:11 GMT
Reply-To: billaud@geocub.UUCP (Michel BILLAUD)
Organization: LaBRI - Universite Bordeaux I - France

In article <meskes.714916931@ulysses> meskes@ulysses.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Meskes) writes:
>All the answers are quite interesting 
	Thank you :-)
but the don't solve the problem.
	At least we've tried !
>As far as I know Prolog is turing-complete and the proofs I know don't use
>the Cut. So why isn't it possible to solve this problem im Prolog?

	Because "turing completeness" means that you can  emulate a TM
by a pure-prolog program after appropriate encoding.

so if you can express p(X) q(X) and r(X) in Pure Prolog, there is a 
TM which computes the same thing as IF p(X) THEN q(X) ELSE r(X),
(which is is computable by a Prolog+cut+... interpreter) and thus
there is a Pure Prolog program which computes the same results. 

But this existence theorem doesnt provide a way to turn
a Prolog+cut+... into a pure prolog program by high-level
source-to-source program transformations, in other words
you desperately need to know the text of p(X), q(X) and s.o.

I think (not really sure of that) there is the same kind of problems
if you want to express the exception mechanism in purely functional
languages. 

>If you still think I want you to do my homework try not to answer. 

?- not(toAnswer).
yes :-)

Michel
-- 
Michel BILLAUD                 :  billaud@geocub.greco-prog.fr
Departement d'Informatique     :  phone W: 56.84.57.92  // 56.84.69.22
IUT "A", Universite Bordeaux I :  "Je veux jouer de l'helicon
33405 Talence  (FRANCE)        :        pon pon pon pon !    "
From: pum@cwi.nl (H.R. Walters (Pum))
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog,cwi.misc
Subject: fast commercial of pd prolog needed
Keywords: fast, available
Date: 1 Sep 92 13:30:13 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lang.prolog
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

Kind Reader,

we have implemented a compiler which translates term rewriting systems 
into C. In order to get insight into the efficiency of the generated code
we are creating a suite of benchmarks in several related languages, such
as prolog. For this purpose we need a fast implementation of prolog, 
preferably public domain, and somewhat widely used. From a limited test,
we established that SBProlog is not suitable; it ran more than three
times as slow as Quitus (on that example). Quintus is no longer accessible 
to us. Our questions are:

	- Who knows a faster ftp-able public domain prolog implementation
	- Is there a commercial prolog available to us for this purpose 
	  (preferable here at cwi)

In gratitude,

Pum Walters and Jasper Kamperman
From: serge@irisa.fr (Serge Le Huitouze)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Re: Compilation of Disjuncts
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:19:05 GMT
Reply-To: brisset@irisa.fr
Organization: Irisa, Rennes(FR)

|>    P ;_Q :- P.
|>    _P; Q :- Q.
|> 
|> SICStus Prolog does nothing special, and considers it as an ordinary
|> predicate as you describe.

You certainly do not do so!
Consider the above example:

go1(X) :- foo(X), ( ! ; true).
go2(X) :- foo(X),  or(!, true).

foo(1).
foo(2).

or(P,_) :- P.
or(_,Q) :- Q.

Executing this in SICSTUS gives:

| ?- go1(X).

X = 1 ? ;

no
| ?- go2(X).

X = 1 ? ;

X = 1 ? ;

X = 2 ? ;

X = 2 ? ;

no
| ?- ^D
{ End of SICStus execution, user time 0.060 }


Is it a kind of remake for "go2 considered harmful" ? :-)


More seriously, how do you treat the so-called "transparency" of the cut ?
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
From: dave@quintus.com (David Bowen)
Subject: Re: Errors in ISO Prolog Draft?
Organization: Quintus Corporation, Palo Alto, CA
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 18:28:00 GMT

In article <Trinity-College-Dublin--Ireland-310892103019@brady.cs.tcd.ie>, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (Michael Brady) writes:
> I am trying to implement disjunction, if-then, if-then-else and
> negation-by-failure according to ISO Prolog Draft of March 27, 1992, and I
> think there may be some mistakes in the examples. Can anyone comment?
> 
> The mistakes (?) are:
> 
> Section 7.8.7.2. This is examples of if-then. The second-last example
> appears to have a syntax error. I won't lose sleep worrying about that one.

Yes, this looks like a syntax error to me too.  It will be fixed.

> Section 7.8.8.2. This is examples of if-then-else. I just don't see how the
> stated behaviour of the last example can conform to the intended operation
> of if-then-else. This one I worry about.

You are right.  The example is wrong.  In the October 91 draft (N84) this 
same example was given (7.7.8.2) with the correct result -- it only succeeds 
once.

-- 
David Bowen				Vice President Product Engineering
Quintus Corporation                     InterNet:       dbowen@quintus.com
2100 Geng Road                          FAX:            415 494 7608
Palo Alto, California 94303             Phone:          415 813 3800
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog