[ANSI-Smalltalk] What's in a name?

[Peter van Rooijen]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:21:29 +0100, Eliot Miranda  
<eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think Smalltalk Standard Project is much much more com pellling than
> Smalltalk Sandards Project.  Please, just *one* standard.  I want an
> accordion not a bunch of mouth organs in different keys...

The singular will surely be fine. But I rather liked the plural...why?

1) I was imagining *multiple instances* of the class Smalltalk Standard  
over the years... ST-80 ST-98 ST-2009 ST-2011 ST-2013.
==> As per Bruce's vision for the future.

2) Also I was seeing *multiple vehicles* of the Smalltalk Standard... open  
standard in community discussion, published ANSI, or whatever other  
organisation that will take some money to put its label on a document.
==> Following the discussion/poll we just had.

3) And also *multiple forms* in which the standard comes... at least in  
the form of a document such as de ANSI-98 PDF, but also an executable  
form, a library that you can load and run, and which detects  
non-conformances to a specific standard for you.
==> This is more personal, I believe it is highly desirable to be able to  
take some code, apply it to an image of a dialect/version, and get a  
report on its standard-(non)conformance.

BTW, I also have this image that Ralph had something like idea number 3)  
in mind when he envisioned the Smalltalk Standard Test Suite and started  
Camp Smalltalk. That idea appealed a lot to many people. It still appeals  
to me (and I would not be too interested in a Standard does does not  
include an automatic testing track/component, like the (ANSI) ST-98  
standard, which is simply a PDF).

Anyway, that's what I was thinking and imagining and why I liked the  
plural. Maybe you could share and explain your image of "multiple mouth  
organs" version an "accordion"?

Best regards, Peter