From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Feedback to the Forth Interest Group
Date: 8 Apr 92 12:33:31 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.

Category 1,  Topic 2
Message 151       Fri Mar 27, 1992
B.DUNN5 [Brian]              at 04:50 EST
 
 Please post a complete summary of ANS Forth with examples to clear up
anything new.  We can always ask questions, and we cannot hurt the standard
itself.  Even if this is not done, someone who knows ANS Forth inside out
should provide a conversion file for F-PC and other commonly used systems. 
There is an entire ANS Forth offered on GEnie for the Amiga computer.  Parts
of the ANS proposals have been published in Forth Dimensions already.

 What if we were all able to update to the latest version of ANS-Forth and
give it a spin?  NOW, rather than months from now?  All that is required is
that someone who knows ANS-Forth take each word in the standard, explain it in
a line or two, show the stack diagram, and show some examples.  There was
nothing in the Basis-10 summary which would be too complicated for this
approach.

 Something like this must be done eventually anyhow, once the standard is
finalized.  And an entire issue of Forth Dimensions should be devoted to the
final standard, and that would be the most important issue ever published.

 Many people have been lamenting Forth's lack of libraries, and saying that
ANS-Forth would make them possible.  While the final version of ANS-Forth is
being hashed out, the rest of us may spend the intervening months working on
those libraries.  There are many interesting programs uploaded to GEnie which
should be converted to ANS-Forth.  Every program available on disk from FIG
should be converted.  The authors of these programs would be the best people
to do these conversions, and many of them still don't know enough about ANS-
Forth to do the work.  Having ANS-Forth now would also make it easier to work
on any new libraries, graphics standards, and whatever else might be useful.

 The worst that can happen by posting a summary of ANS-Forth with examples is
that people will have to ask a lot of questions to figure it out.  The best
that can happen is, months from now when the standard is official and the
public relations articles are published, Forthers will be able to claim that a
large and growing base of software is already using the standard, including
GUI programs, math packages, AI, OO, spreadsheets, databases, assemblers,
metacompilers, etc.  Further, Forthers will be able to claim that ANS-Forth is
immediatly available on Sun workstations plus every popular microcomputer, and
the programs mentioned work without modification on all those platforms.

 Now, wouldn't THAT be an interesting press release?

 The Best of Genie column in Forth Dimensions for March/April '92 laments the
fact that as of mid-January the committee had received no comments.  "I doubt
if any standards effort has ever been so open to scrutiny."  "If you aren't
participating ... you are missing out on a lot ..."  "Consider joining us
soon."

 This standard is meant to be seen, and would be useful right now.  We can ask
questions about anything confusing.  Converting real programs to the standard
might help test it thoroughly before it is finalized.  Several people seem to
want to work on graphics and other additional standards, and an ANS-Forth
would almost be required to test a graphics standard program on different
platforms.  It will take time to convert the current library of programs on
GEnie and available from FIG to ANS-Forth.  Uploading new programs for public
use without ANS-Forth is almost pointless.  Paying $50 for a book which is
already outdated anyhow doesn't make sense.  Making a summary and some
examples shouldn't take too much time, especially considering that several
people have already created entire ANS-Forth systems.  Many people have
devoted a vast amount of time and effort to this project, and hopefully they
will be proud to show the rest of us what they have accomplished.  Certainly
many of the rest of us would like to put these efforts to good use.

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