[Info-vax] Pascal question

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/21/2019 4:57 PM, John Reagan wrote:
> On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 4:20:58 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/21/2019 4:05 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 1/21/19 3:41 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 1/21/2019 1:53 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>> On 1/21/2019 1:07 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>>> Maybe it was time to add 25-50 convenience functions to
>>>>>> VMS Pascal?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> People expect more today. And adding them would show some
>>>>>> progress. And the effort should not be that big aka low hanging
>>>>>> fruit.
>>>>>
>>>>> Or, one can build a library  of often used capabilities ....
>>>>
>>>> Of course.
>>>>
>>>> But it would be better if the standard language runtime came
>>>> with such functionality instead of having hundreds of developers
>>>> each implement their own.
>>>>
>>>> It is not like uppercasing is a very special function that
>>>> only very few need.
>>>>
>>>> It is relative common.
>>>>
>>>> And many other mostly newer languages certainly has it.
>>>
>>> So push the Pascal Standards Committee to add it.  :-)
>>
>> Not going to happen.
>>
>> But since VMS Pascal already have several extensions compared
>> to ISO Pascal, then the lack of it in the standard should not
>> prevent VSI from adding it.
> 
> Good point.  Just as soon as a real customer writes that on the back
> of a $100 bill, I'll get right on it.  I'll call STR$UPCASE for you.
> :)

I know you have priorities.

My thinking is just along the lines of:
* it will take some time until the VMS Pascal users start
   running their production on VMS x86-64.
* many improvements of Pascal would be a lot of work to
   implement and would certainly be a no go from a
   priority perspective
* but maybe just maybe it would make sense to release
   a new Pascal version with some easy stuff (a few
   bug fixes, a bunch of new predefined functions, a few
   extra PEN files) to show that VMS is on the move - throw
   us a few appetizers while we are waiting for the big meal

Arne