| Re: Language Documentation; [message #2488 is a reply to message #2455] |
Fri, 08 July 1994 09:55  |
steinhh
Messages: 260
Registered: June 1994
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Senior Member |
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In article <2vjsic$9p5@ncar.ucar.edu>, caron@acd.ucar.edu (John Caron) writes:
|> As a general comment to RSI, your manuals seem written for the casual,
|> scientist-type (i.e. non-programmer). Sort of a "dont confuse them" attitude.
|> Your language description is woefully vague to the eyes (ears?) of this
|> programmer. How about a "programmer's description" of the language?
|>
|> Comments?
|>
Quite agree!
I was very bewildered one day when someone commented that my use of
"not 0" as a return value could cause problems, since some Fortran
users would write their logical tests as "if i eq 1 then..", meaning
"if i then". With an explanation of the rules, this could be avoided.
Along the same lines, why shouldn't it be possible to have an anonymous
structure as a member of another structure?
And could I pleeease have *pointers* (reference data type)? In Fortran-style
programs (ahem, read scientist's programs) it's quite useless, but when
working with e.g. complex widget applications, sharing large amounts of
data, I've had to implement a "pointer" data type by using SET/GET_UVALUE
and the /NO_COPY keyword! It's actually quite effective (compared to the
alternatives), but not really easy-to-use!
And the manual could have warned about the fact that the use of the
NO_COPY keyword actually makes the variable undefined, when setting
a UVALUE..
Well, that's enough for today..
Stein Vidar Haugan
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