From: dmiller@im.lcs.mit.edu (Dick and Jill Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: FORTH:, Filters and Esperanto
Date: 29 Dec 1992 12:59:14 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

Okay, friends, YOU may not see the similarity between book titles starting 
with "FORTH:".  But I do, and I'm not making it up.  On my company's 
bookshelves are quite a few series which use just this time-honored device.  
(I happen to be glancing at several books in the "THE POWER OF: xxx" series 
by MIS Press.)  "The" certainly is a preposterous example, as is "Bros." at 
the end of a company name.  But that does not extrapolate to make all 
examples preposterous, does it?  These are in overwhelming use, while 
"FORTH:" (so far) remains unique.  You needn't follow the worst example in 
choosing a worthy goal.  Unless you really ARE running out of good 
alternatives, which hardly is the case here.
 
Interpretations, of course, will differ.  I do appreciate those replies 
which managed to seperate thoughtfulness from nastiness.  Fred Olsen, for 
example, pointed out that the title of "Forth: A Text and Reference" 
appears without the colon on the inner cover page.  Interesting; I had just 
talked THAT book's editors out of naming it "FORTH" (ethically improper, 
and even more egotistical and ultimately embarassing than calling one's own 
implementation "SuperForth"), and I know they made the changes against a 
tight printing deadline.  But like the Library of Congress listing, it 
seems to reflect some error, which I would hope gets corrected rather than 
obscuring the book or the issue.
 
Fred also doubts that Mahlon Kelly (co-author of "Forth: A Text and 
Reference") is a lurker on the net.  That's true.  Mahlon neither values 
being a lurker nor participating in the bad vibrations ForthNet often 
generates.  Most of my other Forth friends also, like Mahlon, continue to 
use Forth but no longer crow about it because they don't relish a fight, 
just a great language.  The ANSI process is Forth's latest (but not only) 
Maxwell's Daemon, a filter which causes more and more users to drop out of 
the discussion until finally a concensus group is left inside the circle.
 
Several years before the ANSI effort, I described the astonishing 
similarity of the century-old history of the Esperanto movement.  About 15 
years into its history, a minor improvement became a major schism and 
resulted in Ido, a break-off language which gathered the strong support of 
a great majority of the Esperanto 'gurus' of that day.  (Except for 
L.L.Zamenhoff and a few others, who were the Chuck Moores of that year.)  
The leaders went off with great hopes, but 80% of the followers stayed 
behind and kept a century of consistent language base.  The Idoists 
dwindled quickly but the remaining dozens still develop new ways to 
'improve' Ido, while millions use Esperanto worldwide and use the old 
methods to add new words.
 
This earlier demonstration of the filtering process incurred its more 
lasting penalty not upon Ido, but upon Esperanto and upon the larger world 
which might be benefitting from that language's astonishing ease, accuracy 
and constancy of use.  I believe this is an important message for Forth.
 
--Dick Miller
 
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