From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: FORTH:, Filters and Esperanto
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 01:20:08 GMT

In article <9212291859.AA01626@im4> dmiller@im.lcs.mit.edu (Dick and Jill Miller) writes:
>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.

Personally, I think that complaining about the use of "FORTH:" is
picking at nits.  It is POSSIBLE, based on your comments, that you're
not merely trying to defend the "original" FORTH: book, but as well to
attack jax.  People certainly have attacked him in the past.

>Interpretations, of course, will differ.  I do appreciate those replies 
>which managed to seperate thoughtfulness from nastiness.

Unfortunately, the FORTH community does tend towards, um, a certain
amount of argumentativeness.

>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 term "prophet" certainly comes to mind

>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.

There IS a difference between the Esperanto situation and that of
Forth; human "technology" doesn't change very much.  On the other
hand, computer technology has been changing with leaps and bounds.

The "classical" FORTH is assumed to have a 64K address space, due to
16 bit addressing.  When they're starting to build 32 bit single board
computers, the (essentially) 8 bit-based design philosophy just isn't
very effective.

The segmented systems designed for the Intel market are REALLY
ANNOYING when you've got a CPU that has a MUCH larger linearly
addressible address space.  When every other language that's
available, from BASIC to Oberon, supports the full address space, a
FORTH that is stuck in 8-bits looks pathetic.  I never did do anything
with the 68000 L&P Forth; when "nonstandard" Forths were able to
properly deal with my memory, I used them instead.

Since there has never been any consistent FORTH standard (where
IMPLEMENTATIONS are a separate issue), nobody is forcibly breaking
anything that was ever an absolute given in FORTH.

It's as if there never were an Esperanto dictionary; only some
mutually contradictory sets of grammar primers, along with partial
lexicons that were also mutually contradictory.

(Which ones?  How about Forth-79, Forth-83, FIG-Forth?  Similar, but
different.)

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth