P Witte schreef: > François Van Emelen writes: > >> Lack or absence of comments? <SNIP> > > Its all my fault! However, there are mitigating circumstances. First of all > I had written a much simplified version of the FEW, FET and FEX keywords, > which Id used for years before I ever heard of any other usage. Secondly, as > Thierry wrote in the FI2 manual, the FEX keyword had been deprecated, that > means that future versions of FI2 could well be produced without it. Before > I decided to keep the FEX name in SMSQ/E, I performed a scan of all the > software in my archives, commercial and PD. None used the keyword FEX (I > obviously missed Norback).
> > It would have been easy to avoid even the smallest risk of a conflict by > choosing a different keyword, or set of keywords. But, considering the > quantity of keywords built into Sbasic, I wanted to base the nomenclature on > logic and precedent, as indeed Id done in my original toolkit. TT started > the convention, for example by shortening the OPEN keywords to FOP_XXX > function names. EXEC and EXEC_W had become EX and EW. It seemed logical to > use the abbreviations FEX and FEW (and FET and FEP for those who know their > TK2 and Qpac2). > > Wolfgang dutifully complained and we finally compromised by him supplying an > extra handle to the function: EXF. I also produced a patcher that would > patch any program using the original keyword FEX to something else. All of > this was described in the documentation (except for some reason the patcher > never got distributed). I do understand that the choice of 'FEX' wasn't an overnight decision. Why complaint? After all no harm was done to 'my system' - I always avoided to use 'FEX' for the raison you mentioned and I don't use nor DM5 neither Norback. Why? 1) Because it is a matter of principle, an older command should not be usurped by a newer one. Last time such an 'usurpation' occured was when 'RESET' was introduced. 'RESET' had already been an existing keyword in Howell's DBAS extensions for many years. I didn't understand why my programs suddenly crahed. I had to edit the extension file by replacing 'RESET whith RBSET' (which is not an elegant way to solve things), I had to correct my programs and in the process I lost some important database files. I can assure you I wasn't very happy (to use a euphemism). Why? 2) to avoid similar situations in the future. >> My updated 'keywords list' have more than 3.500 entries now, but I >> don't yhink it is still worth while publishing. My current 'keywords list' has about 3590 entries. If someone out there is interested just let me know. >> He is so right being picky about the way 'SMSQ is updated. > > I agree with the sentiment about being "picky" about the way SMSQ/E is > updated. I think it would be nice to keep the core vocabulary of Sbasic as > "clean" as possible, avoiding unwieldly long names (as found in the Turbo > toolkit, for example) or some of the very cryptic names found in some other > toolkits, which is the reason I did it. > > Im sorry for the one little reported inconvenience caused and hope this has > now been sorted. > > Per Problems solved. Kind regards, François Van Emelen _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
