Dan Moniz wrote:
> 
> >--On Sunday, August 12, 2001 10:02 PM -0400 "Andrew C. Greenberg"
> ><werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
> >
> >>On Sunday, August 12, 2001, at 09:21 PM, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> >>
> >>>It's a bit like Fortran.  Anyone who spells it "FORTRAN" these days
> >>>almost certainly hasn't bothered keeping up with the modern standards.
> >>
> >>I'll own up to ignorance on this.  When did FORTRAN become Fortran?
> >
> >See: http://www.fortran.com/fortran/FAQ/gene.html#1.1.0
> >
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >>  Is
> >>that a well-settled convention now?
> >
> >I think so. LISP is now Lisp. Hmm. Was Forth ever FORTH?

3.2.  Where does the name Forth come from?

       The name FORTH was intended to suggest software for the
       fourth (next) generation computers, which Moore saw as being
       characterized by distributed small computers.  The operating
       system he used at the time restricted file names to five
       characters, so the "U" was discarded.  FORTH was spelled in
       upper case until the late 70's because of the prevalence of
       of upper-case-only I/O devices.  The name "Forth" was gener-
       ally adopted when lower case became widely available,
       because the word was not an acronym.

Good they did not spell the name Smalltalk under these paradigms.
Karl
 
> >
> >>Has BASIC become Basic as well?
> >
> >I'd say so. There's an interesting bit further down the page in the FAQ:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> As an alternate explanation, I would argue that in the case of all
> the languages mentioned, at the time of their creation, acronym or
> no, all of them were originally spelled in uppercase if only due to
> the lack of mixed case keyboards and keymaps.
> 
> --
> Dan Moniz <dnm at pobox.com> [http://www.pobox.com/~dnm/]