I think that was a reply to someone else's comment.
You're right that "original research" doesn't go into Wikipedia. But "major
mainstream outlet" is not required. For example, the Electrologica X1 article
cites sources for its content, most of which are rather obscure publications
such as tech reports in the CWI archives. The point is that it has to be
published elsewhere.
One of these days I'm going to redo my edits on the Frequency Modulation
article to capture the earlier work by Hanso Idzerda (more than a decade
before Edwin Armstrong). Last time I did it got kicked out on BS grounds, but
now there is a published article I can cite. In Dutch, but that doesn't
matter. :-)
paul
> On Feb 16, 2025, at 1:13 PM, David Wise <d44617...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia policy excludes what they call "original research". Unless your
> article was published by some major mainstream outlet, you're toast, even if
> you are literally the last person on Earth who knows the stuff.
>
> From: Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2025 10:08 AM
> To: cctalk@classiccmp.org <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Cc: Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net>
> Subject: [cctalk] Re: Elliott Algol
>
>
>
> > On Feb 16, 2025, at 11:56 AM, ben via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 2025-02-16 7:32 a.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> >
> >> A lot of early "ALGOL" compilers did major subsetting because it was
> >> considered to hard to do the real language. Those subsets may not
> >> actually bear any real resemblance to the actual language. For example, a
> >> "subset" that omits recursion is not ALGOL but rather a mongrel joke.
> >
> > I disagree here, recursion is just one method of problem solving.
>
> That's true but not my point. Yes, you can solve it in Fortran II, without
> recursion, even if the most natural solution is a recursive one.
>
> My point is that support for recursion, and nested blocks, and nested scopes,
> is the essence of ALGOL and what makes it different from FORTRAN II. So a
> language that omits one of those elements cannot legitimately call itself a
> variant or subset of ALGOL, any more than a language without pointers can
> legitimately call itself a subset of C.
>
> > While I think, function nesting is too complex for most use, the use of
> > stack based local variables in blocks was a important step foreword.
>
> Function nesting is an important mechanism in some scenarios, but admittedly
> much work doesn't need it. It's useful enough that GNU C added it as a
> compiler extension.
>
> > Playing around with META-II, compiler compiler I discovered it had
> > no way of handling local variables and symbol tables, as it just moved text
> > around.I could parse fine, but not generate code.
>
> Parsing -- splitting text into tokens (lexing) and building parse trees -- is
> part of the compiler's job but usually the easiest part. Not quite as easy
> if you want good error messages or error recovery.
>
> Code generation is an independent problem, and something that parses programs
> without generating code isn't a compiler, it's at best just a front end.
>
> You might want to look at the GCC internals manual. GCC has an explicit
> layering, with front end processing steps that construct parse trees which
> are then transformed in stages, until they reach the "target" code which
> converts the final internal representation into actual machine code.
>
> > Did many people believe back then that one could just shuffle text around
> > to solve new programing languages like Algol, where it might work with
> > something like Fortran, with some sort of macro processing language.
>
> I doubt it. Compiler compilers (or more accurately, parser generators, like
> the famous YACC) are a later development. By the time that compiler writing
> textbooks like the "dragon book" (Hopcroft and Ullman, if I remember right)
> came out, the relevant theory was well understood. But writing early
> compilers required inventing elements of that theory along the way. Again,
> the Dijkstra/Zonneveld Algol compiler is an example, and Gauthier van den
> Hove spells it out in detail. Dijkstra invented a stack based parser,
> somewhat like a recursive descent parser, which he called the "shunting yard"
> algorithm after railroad yards, as a mechanism for parsing Algol. He also
> invented "displays" which are a way to find the stack frame for the current
> static nesting of recursive function calls.
>
> paul
