Re: "The Best Programming Language for the End of the World"

On 7/04/2025 4:42 pm, Anton Ertl wrote:

dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> writes:

On the topic of documentation Forth Standard (the document to which
everyone looks) hasn't clarified aspects of REPRESENT F. etc.

 
The document does not write itself. 

No, and neither has anyone as the Synod doesn't say what needs to be done.
Can you imagine if Forth-94 had used that approach?  AFAIK sub-committees
were allocated tasks.

If you think that something is
unclear, you can make a request for clarification on
<https://forth-standard.org/> (when it runs again, hopefully soon).
If you think that some text should be changed in a specific way, you
can make a proposal for that.  If you have no interest in doing that
for these topics (which seem to be important enough to mention them
here), why should anybody else have an interest in doing that?
 

That holes still exist after 30 years can only mean forthers are
content with less than perfect documentation.  No?

 
In the case of "F.", I actually believe that most users would prefer
something that produces an output, possibly in scientific
representation, of up to 20 characters over the exact implementation
of the specification that is implemented by Gforth and VFX:
 
1e200 f. 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  ok
1e-200 f. 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001  ok
 
But nobody has written a proposal for changing "F." in that way.  The
feedback on such a proposal would indicate whether my belief is
correct or not.  The absence of such a proposal indicates that the
topic is not important enough for Forth programmers and implementors.

That wasn't it.  Rather the relation between 'significant digits' and
output is never really specified.  Even the example Forth-94 gave ( 1E3 F. )
didn't help because no mention of the PRECISION used.

NT/FORTH (C) 2005  Peter Fälth  Version 1.6-983-824 Compiled on 2017-12-03

3 set-precision
1e3 f.  1000.  ok

6 set-precision  ok
1e f.  1.00000  ok
1e4 f.  10000.0  ok
1e-4 f.  0.000100000  ok
0e f.  0.00000  ok


Gforth 0.7.9_20200709

3 set-precision
1e3 f. 1000.  ok

6 set-precision  ok
1e f. 1.  ok
1e4 f. 10000.  ok
1e-4 f. 0.0001  ok
0e f. 0.  ok

Not sure whether it would affect a Standard Program but I imagine porting
a real-world app could be a problem.