🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3876@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be>, bimbart@hera.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Bart Demoen) writes:
> In <6209@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> R. O'Keefe wrote:
> > I think it would be an excellent thing if more of the people
> > concerned with the Prolog standard understood the language they
> > were standardising.  In particular, one would expect the
> > formal specification of Prolog to be _about_ the same size as
> > the formal specification of Scheme.

> I am afraid I can only understand this the following way:

> 	people involved in the formal specification of Prolog do not
> 	understand the language they are standardizing

Then I suggest that you re-read what you quoted.  To say that it would
be a good thing if MORE of the people understood ... is to make three
claims:
    that some of the people *DO*
and that some of the people *DON'T*
and that it would be good if some who don't learned better.

> If not, it would be nice if he were be very precise and clear about
> the fact he doesn't mean this?

The English I used _was_ very clear and precise.

In strict point of fact, two of the people who were on the BSI committee
before the ISO committee was formed TOLD me they didn't know Prolog.
Things have definitely got better, but not better enough (yet).

Let me add one further point:  it is painfully obvious from many of the
documents distributed as part of the ISO Prolog work that several of
the people associated with that project do not have an adequate grasp
of any operating system outside UNIX/MS-DOS/Mac, to the point that they
continue to take for granted as portable and reasonable to include in
the standard things which are nothing of the kind.  I'm not going to
name names, except to say that I don't mean anyone at BIM and I don't
mean Roger Scowen, who has in fact shown that he _does_ understand some
of the problems.

-- 
Q:  What should I know about quicksort?   A:  That it is *slow*.
Q:  When should I use it?  A:  When you have only 256 words of main storage.