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From: Scott Moore
Subject: P5, and associated test (the PAT)
Date: 16 Feb 2010, 01:03:56
Rugxulo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 2:55 AM, Scott Moore <samiam@moorecad.com> wrote:
>
>> THE BSI TESTS
>>
>> I bought a dialing phone card and have been bothering the BSI directly
>> by phone to encourage them to release the BSI tests, and the "model
>> implementation" compiler.
>>
>
> Does the "model implementation" book itself mention copyright at all?
> It's hard to imagine that they would expect everyone to type it in
> manually AND not share it with anyone (even other book owners).
>
> Jim Welsh, 1986, _A Model Implementation of Standard Pascal_ (Hardcover)
>
> Amazon.com lists four (used!) copies from three sellers (FL, MD, OR):
> $84, $84, $172, $172
>
> Yuk.
>
>
The book is copyrighted, which would also apply to its being OCR
converted and posted online
I would assume. This (for example) does not apply to the BSI validation
suite, which was
openly published without copyright notice.
The text says "All rights to the model implementation as a software
product belong to UMIST".
I have been banging on the UMIST (now merged and simply called
Manchester University)
external affairs department. So far they have not bothered to answer.
I would not sweat the book price. I think I paid about $40 for my copy.
I have seen quite a few
books bid up to insane prices. The vendors know nothing about the book,
they just gathered that
it is in short supply and price accordingly. When they can't sell a
single copy at that price, you
will see one show up at a reasonable price, but you have to check often
to see it.
>> The BSI tests and the model compiler were
>> programmed at various universities in combination with the ISO 7185
>> standard. It was all done off the payroll of the BSI, and the authors
>> meant it to be freely available. Instead, the BSI tried to use it as a cash
>> cow, charging $1000 per copy, and vastly more to "certify" implementations
>> as compliant with the tests.
>>
>
> Don't the authors (or universities) have copyright on it? Where's Eben
> Moglen when you need him? :-))
>
>
>> Anyways, a lot of time has passed, the BSI has both discontinued the
>> Pascal standard, and long stopped distributing the programs. However,
>> they never released the copyrights they (apparently) hold over the
>> material. I have heard several folks opine that the programs may no
>> longer exist at the BSI, perhaps thrown away.
>>
>
> Ugh.
>
>
>> In my calls to the BSI, they have just given me the runaround ("we
>> are waiting for an answer from the committee".. for several months
>> now). If some of you care about the BSI hiding and killing a historically
>> important program, now would be a good time to call them:
>>
>> (0)2089967004 in London,
>> ask for Beth Carter or Lucy Ahmed
>>
>
> I doubt my calling would help. (Besides, I'm not even sure how to call
> such a foreign number, I'm soooo naive, heh.)
>
>
>> More voices might get them moving. Again, the BSI never programmed
>> any of the tests, and it is highly debatable that the original authors would
>> have agreed to the BSI's current actions.
>>
>
> (reading Wikipedia)
>
> Seems Jim Welsh and Quinn ported the CDC one to ICL 1900 in 1972 at
> Queen's University Belfast. (Welsh is Irish? Heh.) Also seems that
> other universities and people (including Welsh) got involved in
> various ports and rewrites, e.g. Manchester, Glasgow, etc. All of
> these apparently heavily influenced the "model implementation" of
> Welsh.
>
> Anyways, long story short, surely somebody at Queen's University
> Belfast knows how to find Jim Welsh (assuming he has some right to his
> work).
>
He's retired, and he does not answer his email. I think realistically
it's possible he may consider
Pascal a closed issue and not care. It may make more sense to talk to
the university about good
press.
>> The GPC group would be the biggest beneficiaries of a BSI release of
>> the tests to public domain. This would give you all a rock solid and
>> well researched series of tests to run.
>>
>
> Since GPC is a GNU project, perhaps the FSF can lend a few legal hands
> to help smooth such a transition. At the very least, maybe they could
> get some dialog going.
>
>
>> Anyways, several folks realized that the original minimum memory,
>> minimum bootstrap represented by P4 was not really necessary
>> going into the 80's, and that it would be better to have a full,
>> Wirth original and ISO 7185 Pascal compiler.
>>
>
> The CDC had two MB of RAM, right? (mid-60s?) Much more than most
> people had until much much later. Of course, these days it's quaint,
> but back then it was a big deal, hence why MS-DOS (and the 8088) in
> the early 80s only addressed max. 1 MB initially (until DOS extenders
> appeared for 286s, 386s, etc. in mid-to-late 80s).
>
You are right, and the CDC ran a full compiler for the CDC itself. The
Pascal-P authors
were proud that the system ran in minimal configuration with a subset of
the language,
the "minimum subset required to self compile". I think in retrospect it
was a massive miscalculation
for two important reasons. First, P2 was adopted by microcomputer users
as a subset language
without feeling the need to "complete" the bootstrap to a full language,
and second, because
presenting Pascal-P as a subset of the full language left important
examples of implementation
out of the porting kit. Of course I am talking about UCSD, but they were
widely copied. Ken
Bowles later did add back most of original Pascal to the compiler, but
by then it was far too
late. UCSD was a widespread dielect of Pascal, and Borland only cared
about compatability
with the first users of UCSD, not the later ones.
>> Now, as to why the GPC group might care about P5. P5 is
>> both an example compiler, and also a large and non-trivial
>> program written in ISO 7185 standard Pascal. It also enables
>> "stack up" verification. That is, a series of ISO 7185 tests can
>> be run against the base compiler, then P5 is run, and then P5
>> itself is run against the ISO 7185 test suite.
>>
>
> So P5 0.5 can now bootstrap itself. Definitely interesting. :-)
>
>
Actually, its probably the first time it was ever run on itself as an
interpreter. They self-compiled
P0-P4 (yes, there was a P0), but the goal was a listing of
intermediates. To self-interpret and then
self compile (that is, pcom running on the interpreter compiling itself)
takes in the 10's of minutes.
I suspect that this feat, running on a modern 2.4 GHZ x86 was probally
beyond the CDC 6000
series in less than days of runtime. There was not much reason they
would have tried. It would
have been a pointless stunt (back then).
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