On 23/04/2012 17:05, Miles Forster wrote:
> Thanks for the answer.
>
> Am 23.04.2012 17:49, schrieb R A Brown:
>> Personally, if I were to develop a purely stack-based
>> language, I think I would forget Jeffrey's 'stack
>> conjunctions' and start again. I would get something more
>> human usable, [...].
>
> But wouldn't making the language more human usable make it
> less interesting with regards to the challenge?

Sorry - I obviously wasn't clear enough. What I meant was 
sort of analogous to this:
If you take the 'normal' mathematical expression  1 + 2 × 3 
- 4 ÷ 5 and derived the parse tree and then do a post-order 
traversal through the nodes, reading off each node, you get 
the postfix notation 1 2 3 × + 4 5 ÷ -, which can be 
evaluated using only a stack.

What I was suggesting was taking the parse tree of 'normal' 
human language and subjecting to a similar process. The idea 
is that one would begin to get the feel of the way a 
stack-based language might be ordered.

As a guess, you might finish with, say, something like:
me car me belong you to drive can

= I can drive my car to you.

I would expect as sentences got longer, and especially when 
relative clauses and various types of subordinate clauses 
get involved the results would be not be 'human friendly'.

> If I dumb
> down Fith to be almost like a natlang,

Not what I intended.  I was just suggesting a possible way 
to _start_.  I would expect the language to evolve into 
something that was not like a natlang and was not 'human 
friendly.'

> then learning to
> speak it won't impress or surprise anyone. My motivation to
> learn Fith came from everybody saying it was impossible.

Yes - Jörg's 'shallow' -but valid - subset of Fith is 
clearly not impossible.

I'm not so sure that Fith as it stands is "impossible", at 
least for anyone familiar with Forth.  I have been told in a 
private email that the 'stack conjunctions' "are modelled on 
Forth stack operators, and do not strike me as particularly 
elegant ..."

I think what people mean - at least what I mean - by saying 
Fith is 'impossible' is that if it were fully worked out as 
a purely stack-based language, the result would be, to say 
the least, difficult for ordinary human use.

-- 
Ray
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