The whole Channel thing

[chris hermansen]

Good evening once again,

I have this sense of a few things emerging from the murk, but I'm not sure
I'm fully appreciating them. mode Channel is one of those things.

I am beginning to think that instances of mode Channel are entirely and
completely defined in the standard prelude and there is no intent to allow
the programmer to define more channels on her own.  I base this opinion on
a few things:

1. Mountbatten's algol68toc translator defines a whole slew of Channel
instances, including the keyboard, the environment variables, the
arguments, and others.

2. Our dear mentor McGettrick begins his discourse on Channels with the
following:

Channels correspond to the physical devices (i.e. peripherals) attached to
a computer and their precise form will depend on the particular ALGOL 68
system.


3. Try as I might, I have found nowhere an example of a declaration of a
Channel (nor a ref Channel) outside the standard prelude.

So with that all in mind, I don't see a whole lot of point to defining any
Channel instances other than:

standin channel
standout channel
standback channel
standerr channel

for a "first attempt" at creating a working transput library.

Does anyone object to that approach?  If so, an alternative would be to
look at Mountbatten's list of Channel instances to pick out what might be
necessary (again for a first attempt).
-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.
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