Re: Which standard?

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Which standard?
Date	2012-05-02 14:07 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<2012May2.160740@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References	(6 earlier) <slrnjpq96v.3br.zbigniew2011REMOVE@Tichy.myhome.org> <_6CdnWdTP4v1lgDSnZ2dnUVZ_qidnZ2d@supernews.com> <4f9d18f2.313007082@192.168.0.50> <2012Apr30.155927@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <4f9ec267.421924235@192.168.0.50>

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stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) writes:
>On Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:59:27 GMT, anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
>(Anton Ertl) wrote:
>
>>stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) writes:
>>>The problem is that nobody (including MPE) removed their version
>>>of NOT from their implementations - it was perfectly legal to
>>>leave it in.
>>
>>Gforth never contained NOT, but then we only started after it was
>>clear that NOT was not in ANS Forth.
>>
>>>I have long believed that marking words as obsolete is not enough.
>>
>>NOT was not made obsolete.  It is not in Forth-94 at all.
>
>I think that you are missing the point.
>
>Words that the TC (or community) believe should die out, e.g. NOT or
>FORGET, need to be marked in such a way that implementers make an
>effort to remove them. If we don't do this, there will be discussions
>about NOT in another twenty years, nearly forty years after NOT was
>removed from a standards document.

My guess is that, if we do this, there will also be discussions about
NOT in another twenty years, with slightly different content.  That's
because people would like to have NOT as a standard word
(unfortunately without consensus on what it should mean).  Note that
the current discussion did not come about because of NOT in some
specific systems, so the absence of NOT in every system would not have
prevented it.

Also, I think that preventing discussions about a word is an extremely
weak reason for a change in the standard.

>>One approach would have been to mark NOT as reserved word name, so
>>that systems providing NOT would be non-standard.  That might have
>>cooled the usage down enough to allow re-standardization now, but OTOH
>>there would then be no common practice.
>
>I agree with the first sentence. As for the second sentence, lack
>of common practice (as opposed to common name) indicates lack of
>need.

There would be common practice for using 0= and INVERT, and for
aliasing NOT as one of them, but no common practice for which one to
alias with.

>It really does not matter what NOT "ought" to mean. In the current
>situation, using that name is irresponsible for portability.

That's because there is no consensus on what it ought to mean.

Maybe a solution would be to define NOT only for well-formed flags,
and to require systems to produce an error for other arguments for now
(but programs must not rely on that), i.e.:

: NOT ( f1 -- f2 )
  dup 0= over invert <> -12 and throw \ argument type mismatch
  invert ; \ or 0=, same result

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2011: http://www.euroforth.org/ef11/

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Re: Which standard? Marc Olschok <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2012-04-27 14:15 +0000
  Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-27 15:30 -0700
    Re: Which standard? vandys@vsta.org - 2012-04-27 23:34 +0000
      Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-27 17:25 -0700
  Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-04-28 04:13 -0500
  Re: Which standard? Zbiggy <zbigniew2011REMOVE@gmail.REMOVE.com> - 2012-04-29 00:10 +0100
    Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-28 12:53 -1000
      Re: Which standard? Zbiggy <zbigniew2011REMOVE@gmail.REMOVE.com> - 2012-04-29 01:06 +0100
        Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-28 13:43 -1000
          Re: Which standard? Zbiggy <zbigniew2011REMOVE@gmail.REMOVE.com> - 2012-04-29 11:23 +0100
            Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-04-29 04:35 -0500
              Re: Which standard? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-04-29 02:55 -0700
                Re: Which standard? Zbiggy <zbigniew2011REMOVE@gmail.REMOVE.com> - 2012-04-29 12:01 +0100
                Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-04-29 05:17 -0500
                Re: Which standard? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-04-29 14:11 +0200
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-29 08:01 -1000
                Re: Which standard? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-04-29 20:17 +0200
                Re: Which standard? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-04-29 11:18 -0700
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-29 08:36 -1000
                Re: Which standard? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-04-29 11:57 -0700
                Re: Which standard? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-04-29 23:48 +0000
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-29 13:38 -1000
                Re: Which standard? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-04-30 14:33 +0200
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-30 07:33 -1000
                Re: Which standard? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-04-30 19:47 +0200
              Re: Which standard? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-04-29 10:36 +0000
                Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-04-29 11:40 -0500
                Re: Which standard? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-04-30 13:59 +0000
                Re: Which standard? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-04-30 16:59 +0000
                Re: Which standard? "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2012-05-01 07:38 +0100
                Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-05-01 09:36 -0400
                Re: Which standard? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-05-02 10:30 +0000
                Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-05-02 08:33 -0400
                Re: Which standard? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-05-02 14:07 +0000
                Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-30 11:50 -0700
                Re: Which standard? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-04-30 15:27 -0700
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-04-30 13:39 -1000
                Re: Which standard? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-05-02 14:24 +0000
                Re: Which standard? Marc Olschok <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2012-05-03 17:17 +0000
                Re: Which standard? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-05-03 11:26 -0700
                Re: Which standard? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-05-03 09:16 -1000
                Re: Which standard? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-05-04 12:56 +0000
                Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-05-03 14:27 -0500
                Re: Which standard? Jan Coombs <jan_2011-02@murray-microft.co.uk> - 2012-05-04 01:56 +0100
                Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-05-04 06:25 -0700
          Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-04-29 07:18 -0400
            Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-04-29 07:35 -0400
            Re: Which standard? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-04-29 23:56 +0000
              Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-29 16:43 -0700
                Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-04-30 08:09 -0400
                Re: Which standard? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-04-30 08:16 -0500
                Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-04-30 10:27 -0400
                Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-30 06:19 -0700
              Re: Which standard? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-04-30 07:49 -0400
      Re: Which standard? BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-28 16:23 -0700

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