🚀 go-pugleaf

There have been several messages recently voicing  dissatis-
faction  with the extent of the changes in the FORTH-83 pro-
posal.  While  I  appreciate  the  difficulties  that  these
changes might cause, I feel that the following points should
not be overlooked:

1)   In terms of widespread use, FORTH  is  relatively  new.
     Its  underlying  concepts  are  novel,  and some of its
     design weaknesses became apparent only  with  time.   I
     don't  think  what  we  have is good enough to consider
     casting it in stone.  I also think that  some  sets  of
     extensions  (not in the nucleus) should be proposed and
     standardized.

2)   The main idea of the FORTH philosophy (as I see it)  is
     that  you  are  free  to  fashion  your own programming
     environment, or hierarchy of environments, using  FORTH
     as  the  nucleus.   In  particular you can simulate the
     environment provided by any previous version  of  FORTH
     by  defining a vocabulary that sits on top of the newer
     FORTH and redefines (to their original meanings)  what-
     ever words were changed.

These remarks are not meant to  endorse  FORTH-83,  which  I
haven't  read,  but  only to support the idea of an evolving
standard.  As an aside, I am working on extensions to  FORTH
for   doing   computer   music.   These  involve  concurrent
processes, and some object-type structures.  I would like to
hear from anyone interested in this.

David Anderson (uwvax!anderson)
U. of Wisconsin Comp. Sci.