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Talk:ALGOL 68

Discussion of Algol 68 wikipedia content/style
I propose to shorten the article considerably. In the present form it has a too defensive character. For my feeling, the references to Perl, Scheme, ML are not really helpful. Some criticisms don't need to be mentioned (operator priority discussion). --Glasreiniger 13:24, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure I agree the article needs to be shorter. In many ways it should be longer. But it could certainly be improved. It has that common problem that it has been added to in pieces by many people with new information, and has lost any unity and structure it might have had.
 * My thoughts are
 * Rename "Overview" (which it isn't) as "Notable language features". Make sure everything there is notable, and make sure it makes sense to someone who never saw the language before.
 * Rework "some vanitas" into "Notable language features" or lose it.

Hmm. Iff the article is shortened, this is a good candidate, too. Note the "iff". In the present state of the article it may expalin some of the shortcomings.
 * Criticisms should not be based on new insights; new insights don't belong.

Why not?
 * Comparisons with other languages may have a place, but are they original research? In any case the comparison with C++ is not factually accurate (e.g. C++ has formatted transput, surely, with printf/scanf) and may not add much to the article.

printf is not part of the language, contrasting to A68. Ethouris
 * --- This does not change anything. The language together with its standard library is something the user has on start. So this whole set should be considered, if you want to compare. You would also say that Tcl does not provide Object-Oriented features, not even mentioning that it has several libraries that provide it. Please, try not highlighting in comparisons things that are "not supported in the core language" because for a particular language user this does not mean anything; such a user would like to know if he can just do some thing requiring this feature or not. Not only has C++ printf-s derived from C's standard library, but there is also provided Boost::format with richer facilities. Should you have it in a language, you can say that the feature is available, no matter how. I would be rather interrested with facilities, which MUST be done in the core language and, for example, C++ does not have it and it is hard to emulate it.

 * Variants needs to mention the important ALGOL 68C and ALGOL 68R. The first part of that section belongs under notable language features or nowhere. Proceduring is notable, I think, but must be defined.

Proceduring is *the* part of the language where the non-revised language failed, and it was noted. Proceduring, as defined in the in the non-revised language didn't work correctly. But removing proceduring was a really bad cure for that. It is easy to see, that a usable description could have been found, by the simple fact that adding some parentheses and "PROC BOOL:" in the source make the magic work (correctly!).
 * I'd like to see more on history and especially on discussions of the reason for its failure. http://www.cs.ru.nl/~kees/home/papers/psi96.pdf is a very interesting reference. "[The revised report] resulted in an exemplarily clear, precise and consistent description of anelegant and orthogonal language that was at its appearance already classical but dead.

Agreed.
 * An original insight that could be included if someone else published it: why would the commercial world implement a language from academia in the form of a report, which also included a minority report definining a different language? Suicide!

Notinasnaid 12:10, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Let me comment on the last item: It wasn't suicide. --Glasreiniger 21:24, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Let us try to make a good article, at least. If nobody complains, I am going to start making the article more concise, trying to use your hints.

 * New insights? At one time I found this rule as an adjunct to "no original research", i.e. "no original insights". I can't find it now!

 * The issue with proceduring is that it is not defined before it is discussed. I know what it is, but I don't think anyone who didn't would be left any the wiser. It is quite an interesting and unusual idea, and worthy of discussion.

 * Anyway, to follow another Wikipedia rule: "Be bold!" Notinasnaid 21:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Implementation of Algol68
Concerning Algol68 being an academic language and already dead-at-birth: at Control Data Corporation we've built an almost complete implementation (only 1 or 2 items missing), commercially published around 1978 for use on 6000 and Cyber series mainframes. The resulting code was quite efficient, notwithstanding the often called "complexity" of the language.

Operators
Is the elem operator the same as the ⌷ operator, or was/is the "¤" from EBCDIC used?

Also: I kinda recall "somewhere" that in place of := and =: one could use ← and →. Am I getting mixed up with APL?

NevilleDNZ 02:01, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The rectangle is called "window symbol" in the RR, it is used as elem operation symbol, yes (RR10.2.3.9b). The report does not define how the symbols are encoded. A different document (Hansen, Boom: The Report on the Standard Representation for ALGOL 68) tries to clarify how the symbols are represented in ISO646 and EBCDIC. This document discourages the use of most symbols not in the intersection of these symbol sets.

(C.5 Other characters: A portable program should be written entirely in worthy characters, becasue only these characters are available in all implementations). The digraph <- is not allowed in a68 as operator symbol, as in S-plus, e.g. because x < -1 and x <- 1 would easily be confounded. ->, though, could be used. Extensive use of exotic symbols is not typical for programs written in A68. --85.22.19.171 19:26, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Have been skimming throught the Draft Final Report you pointed out online.... It seems that there is a whole pile of operators in the Draft Final Report I never even knew about. Check Pages 109...  The FR allows .. as well as :, → in place of " of ".  Did this "I am guessing that this online version isn't the "Final Final Report".  Looks like I have a bit more reading to do.  (Ironically a similar -> made it into C/C++)
 * But it looks as if the semantics were inverse. Personally, I prefer C++ in this respect. You call the document "draft": AFAICS my prionted version of thsi is the final published report, but before revision. I never got in acquaintance with A68 before revision. So I cannot comment mcuh on this, except that I had preferred that proceduring (not as coercion) ahd survived.

--Glasreiniger 20:02, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The American Standards Association (ASA, later to become ANSI) first published ASCII as a standard in 1963. ASCII-1963 lacked the lowercase letters, and had an up-arrow (↑) instead of the caret (^) and a left-arrow (←) instead of the underscore (_).
 * "1968 President Johnson issues order adopting the (newer) American Standard Code for Information Exchange (ASCII-1967) as a federal standard".
 * Hence Algol68 was straddles both ASCII-1963 and ASCII-1967 standards.
 * Ironically the ¢ (cents) symbol got dropped from the Amercian ASCII standard, but became part of the European Algol 68 standard.
 * NevilleDNZ 16:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I also found the A*10**B symbols were 10 AND "\". And some strange operators I havn't figured out yet..., i.e. lws, ups , ctb , btb , ::, ct , ctab etc, with related APL characters...
 * ¢ NevilleDNZ 17:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

Hardware character sets and representation

 * I had look into unicode internals for this case. It looks as if the "base ten" symbol was the only machine written symbol of computer age which didn't make it into unicode. This should be changed. But, personally, I don't like unicode enough to feel engaged. It seems that, if anybody wants to make this into unicode, has to be prepared very well. Of course, the representation using two subscripts is sufficient to publish documents containing. But for this, Unicode subscript were superfluous as well. The origin of this symbol seems from British teletype code as variant to the backslash, and it has been used in the German TR440 computer central code ZC1 at position 141. --Glasreiniger 20:02, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I used Algol68C on EBCDIC of IBM VM/CMS and ASCII of DEC10. There were no "exotic characters", but fortunately there were upper and lower case, otherwise Algol68 code would have looked worse the COBOL code. Clearly there was no Unicode back in 1968, so did the "exotic characters" only ever exist on paper, or were they sourced from some other pecular computer system? Also, if I recall right, a semicolon was also regarded a exotic to some character sets, hence Algol-W used a comma-dot, instead of a semicolon at the end of statements. (And hence maybe the : used in todays array slices x[1:3], possibly originated from x[1..3] which appears to be more natural)

 * CHA Koster tells in his memories about the making of ALGOL 68, that the writers of the Report had much fun in finding new symbols on the typewriter wheels, which were state of the art at that time.

 * The IBM 2741 Terminal (c. 1965), this must have been what Adriaan van Wijngaarden had been using before the Aug 68 meeting. (Then in 1975 for $20,000 you could get a IBM 5100 ). Maybe it was the IBM Code page was being used in the IBM 2741 alternatly Code page 293, or Code page 371.

 * Another Algol68 superset totally missing from wikipedia is Algol68+ But I suspect that was not often used outside of The Netherlands.  It would be interesting to lists its character set as Adriaan van Wijngaarden had a particular interest here.
 * ¢ NevilleDNZ 02:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

The ¬ clearly entered via EBCDIC. I am kind of surprised the the ¢ was so extensively used in the actual RR, it is in EBCDIC, but not ASCII. But certainly any typewritter can do it with a C^H/.

Language semantics
On an aside, in fortran a declaration of "REAL REAL REAL" is legal, I am guessing Algol68 was trying to mimic this in its declaration syntax, eg by allowing " real real real;", (which contains spaces in variables, and reuse of "reserved" words/tokens). If this true?

 * In case of FORTRAN IV, spaces are not significant in any position except in H formats. Position is, though. That spaces in identifiers are allowed, is heritage from Algol60.

And on another aside, why did Algol68 have the IF .. FI, DO .. OD and CASE .. ESAC. But spoil every thing by using CO .. CO, and PR .. PR, no CO .. OC and PR .. RP?

 * Probably an oversight. Comments do not contain interesting stuff. But TNEMMOC would look rather strange. NIGEB, too. When I program A68, I don't use IF..FI very often. I prefer the short symbols ( | | ), anyway. But for DO..OD there are no short symbols. --Glasreiniger 17:19, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * TNEMMOC & TAMGARP probably wouldn't translate into Dutch very well either. ¢ NevilleDNZ 06:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC) ¢
 * It is little known, that the ALGOL68 Reports have been translated into German and Russian, possibly other languages, too. The termini technici like MOID have been translated also in the unrevised report, in case of MOID the German translation was MÖSCH, which is a contraction of MODUS and LÖSCH. For the RR only the text was translated. --Glasreiniger

(BTW: Every time I do a "do .. done" loop in borne shell I cannot help but think of someone (long long ago) shooting themself in the foot with the unix "/bin/od" command)

NevilleDNZ 20:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

On the CDC 63- and 64-character sets, where ":" was problematic or missing, ".." was a representation substitute. This may have given rise to the use of ".." in Pascal, which was also first developed for the CDC mainframe series. Notinasnaid 22:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The Control Data computers with their 6bit characters are, of course, very restricted. The standard hardware representation for A68 declares 60 characters worthy. --Glasreiniger 17:19, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Operators vs "Syntatic elements"
I noticed some laxness in the operator list. In Algol 68 "IS","ISNT" and their shorter forms :=: :/=: are not operators but special syntactical symbols like :=. I am not sure whether correcting this would go to much into technical details. For now I just move the short forms from the implementation column to the original language column, where they belong. --Glasreiniger 11:27, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I have found an argument, why it must be corrected: The priorities are wrong. These constructs don't have PRIO 4,. Effectively their priority is less than that of any opreator. Maybe putting them in a row with PRIO 0 and a comment is a good solution. --Glasreiniger 18:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

If I remember right :=: and :/=: were not part of the standard. BTW I dug the is and isnt op erator pri rities from the Revised Report, so the prio  is = 4, isnt = 4; should be OK.

 * Sorry to disagree. But the is symbol is not an operator, it just loooks like one. The :=: was present in in unrevised report already. For the negated equal sign, two possibilities are provided in the RR: either the mathematical unequal sign or the digraph from slash and equal sign for operator and identity relation symbol. The not symbol is only used to construct operators. --Glasreiniger 18:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. I checked the RR that you put online, and you are right.  So, I have effectively moved the :~=: "syntactic" elements to priority 0.  I left the plusto, but removed the other timesto operators as I could not find them in the RR.  I wish I had a copy of the Algol68C manual to see if the timesto were implemented there.
 * I have a copy of the Algol68C manual. If this is not available on the net already, I could perhaps make scans available. But, with no compiler for this implementation, this is not too interesting. Algol68C does not define or allow to define operators with assignation. These are automatically available for all operators where these are applicable. So, Algol68C has timesto and similar. I am not sure that the authors really thought much about the displace-formulas, how they call these, after looking this up. --Glasreiniger 15:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Do you know the "official" priority of the uniary operators? esp not, as typically (in other languages) its priority is lower then that of arithmetic diadic operators.
 * In A68, all monadic operators have prio 10. The most likely troublespot is -1^n . Of course, it would be more natural to have all boolean operators at a lower priority than arithmetic.
 * I guess my interest in the article is not to create a reference, but to answer some of the questions on the origins of Algol68 of the kind a learner may ponder, Why this? why that? etc.  And keep the reading relatively "light".  Kind of a "extra lite Algol68" version of "The Annontated C++ reference manual".  So feel to interject if anything I add is too heavy.

LALR parsers

 * BTW: did anyone ever write a parser (like YACC) for the language of the Revised Report eg. "REF to MODE NEST destination{a} : soft REF to MODE NEST TERTIARY"?

¢ NevilleDNZ 01:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
 * Algol68 cannot be parsed by LALR parsers because the natural grammar is not LR1. One of the big troublemakers is, that a comma is allowed between declarations; so a variable declaration may follow a mode declaration; so you don't know whether a mode indicant at this place is a defining or applying one before seeing the equals sign. At least you need to know the priority before use, if you want to parse operator precedence in one run. The Algol68C restriction is sufficient for this case. I have written a YACC parser for Algol68 for the full language with this restriction myself. I cannot really claim that this is a faithful parser, because some of the syntactic restrictions are not enforced. They have to be honored in the sematic routines. --Glasreiniger 14:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember (and this is from a very long time ago, when I was thinking about writing a compiler), that one of the most challening constructs to encounter starts

op == ( mode... where you don't know yet how to parse the ==. Is this a typed operator declaration for ==, or an untyped declaration for =? This may be misremembered, but something like this annoyed me for a long time. Notinasnaid 16:04, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * This is not the actual trouble spot, because in the typed op declaration the declared symbol comes after the modes: OP (INT,INT)BOOL == SKIP . IMHO it is allowed to restrict usage of = as defines-symbol not to be adjacent to operator symbols it can combine with.
 * But if you have MODE FOO = STRUCT(...), BAR = ..., you need to 2 tokens look-ahead to see the equal sign, before you can decide that the mode declaration continues; otherwise BAR could start a variable or identity definition. In my lexer this leads to the restriction, that after a boldtag in defining context only one blank is allowed. The comment in my Flex lexer calls this a quirk. A hand-written lexer could avoid this.
 * Note that the keyword MODE is nearly useless, because a parser powerful enough to cope with this is also able to know that FOO = STRUCT ... must be the begin of a mode declaration, anyway. --Glasreiniger 16:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

As an aside, Charles Lindsey, one of the editors of the Revised Report, lectured to me in the Manchester Department of Computer Science on Algol 68 around 1970. He worked on one of the early compilers and I seem to remember him saying that they considered parsing the language in reverse, i.e. starting with the last token. This is clearly possible, but I'm not sure if it was ever done nor what the complexity of the reversed grammar might be.

Online reports
I am not a member of ACM, here is the revised report, do you know if this PDF is produced from scanning paper, or from original electronic text/input (Maybe EBCDIC)?

 * The ACM version is just the image from scanning. I happen to be the one who has made the (first) revised report available online. http://vestein.arb-phys.uni-dortmund.de/~wb/RR/rr.pdf e.g.. There are also TeX, .html and .dvi versions. Karl Kleine has published the MR176 paper. I am quite sure that the symbols in my version are the correct ones for the report. Charles Lindsey himself has done some proofreading of my text. --Glasreiniger 17:44, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * One nice thing you could do (from the html), is imbed a URL pointing to the original scanned paper original. That way others can help spot OCR/scanner errors and email you fixes.

¢ NevilleDNZ 01:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
 * I shall follow this hint. But the accessibility of an ACM document is seriously difficult. Though, there is an authentic machine readable RR available now, from Dick Grune in []. The unrevised report is at []--Glasreiniger 17:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I mostly converted the RR to html (with a python script) today. ¢ NevilleDNZ 17:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

If one looks, there are getting to be a lot of Algol68 resources on the internet.
 * http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Algol_68
 * [mangled because triggering spam filter]http://www.~o~r~k~u~t.com/Community.aspx?cmm=1692610 :-)

¢ NevilleDNZ 02:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

Algol68 Final Report special characters
i.e. The ∨, ∧, ¬(?), ≠, ≤, ≥, ×, ÷, ⌷, ↑, ↓, ⌊, ⌈ and ⊥ characters. APL2 keyboard stickers are available from IBM part number SC33-0604. They cost about $13 for a set of two.

¢ NevilleDNZ 16:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

Just curious: The number of atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12 is known as Avogadro's number. It is approximately 6.0221415×10↑23 (2002 CODATA value). Does the RR still allow me to define this constant as follows: ⑽, ⒑, ⑩ do exist in unicode... something to do with the British wanting to support 12 pennys in a shilling. But the subscript 10 needs two characters.
 * real n = 6.0221415₁₀23;

Maybe we need to get the Working Group 2.1 on ALGOL68 to revise the RR to include/loby Unicode for 2005?? :-)

¢ NevilleDNZ 15:44, 25 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

 * IMHO there are enough reasons to do a formal proposal to unicode.org to include this symbol. It has been included in a German norm (DIN66006 IIRC), it has been discussed in ACM: comm.ACM 7 No 7(424,447), there called "subscript 10". Personally, I don't like Unicode enough to be engaged in this. A nice web page about codes includes it: ALCOR. But a better place to show this stuff should sougth, because it distracts from the programming language. And it is heritage from ALGOL58. --Glasreiniger 08:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I kinda agree with you...  for example, even without significant support for the official APL character set, the APL developers continued programming in APL using "other characters".  After all character sets don't make a language. Beside if we want to add to wiki all the details of the language (including the 10), then we might as well replace the wiki-page with the Revised Report!!  (I am allowed to be harsh as it was my suggestion)
 * The now realise that the 10 characterm appears in several standards.  ALCOR of [ACM] (became DIN 66006 in Germany), GOST 10859 7 bit Cyrillic & Latin.
 * In GOST 10859/Cyrillic there appears to be various characters subsets giving greater text compression:
 * 4 bits - numeric data
 * 5 bits - numeric + operators
 * 6 bits - numeric + operators + Cyrillic Cyrillic worthy characters
 * 7 bits - numeric + operators + Cyrillic + Latin + Algol graphics Cyrillic base characters
 * BTW: Why was the word "worthy" used... was it a pun?
 * ⍧ NevilleDNZ 04:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC) ⍧
 * Ironically the APL keyboard that appears to be the defacto keyboard for Algol68/FR, can still be obtained from IBM even today.

I can see another mine-field just with Working Group 2.1 adopting a unicode version of Algol68. After all which asterix is the official Algol68 asterix, there are dozens in Unicode. Not to mention many ways of writting the number 10.

BTW: ThanX for telling me where the 10 came from. Needless to say I used Algol68 in ascii, and didn't even realise it existed until I read the whole RR.

⍧ NevilleDNZ 17:37, 28 September 2005 (UTC) ⍧

 * If you look VERY carefully into this part of the report, you may be be able to notice, that the label symbol is a slanted colon, in contrast to the routine symbol and the colon used in slicing. The alternative EXIT symbol should be a fat point. -- Glasreiniger 07:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I did notice in the machine readable document that the label colon had been given a special name "lbl". I wondered if this was just a "throw back" the document formating softawre used.  (BTW: does this document foram have a name?).
 * I also noted that there is something called a "thin". eg in RR at section 3.3 between [ & ] is a "thin":
 * thinspace, \, in TeX.

[ ] INT q = (1, 4, 9, 16, 25); STRUCT (INT price, STRING category) bike := (150, "sport").

 * My gut feeling was so that [] didn't look too much like a window character ⎕.

Here us a rough match of the RR name, and the unicode equiv that I found. I gave priority to the APL keyboard.
 * LWS and UPS are the lower/upper state operators from the Algol681/FR.

 * BTW: Look at ALL these unicode characters for asterick: "✢✣✤✥✦✧✩✪✫✬✭✮✯✰✱✲✳✴✵✶✷✸✹✺✻✼✽✾✿❀❁❂❃❄❅❆❇❈❉❊❋". Now you know why I priotised first the APL characters.  ☺.   Me thinks that asking for just 1 "subscript ten"=₁₀ from the unicode guys would be a good idea to counter balance all the astericks!

 * I had totally forgotten about the "nil" symbol "○" (It is not in Algol68C ascii/ebcdic).

 * Unicode also has several logical and/or symbols... I guess usage of other codes (eg now Unicode) was seen as site specific.   Making Algol68 Unicode Ready. ☺

 * Can you point me to a scanned/online version of the RR. AND Was SKIP officially a "~", or a "?"?

⍧ NevilleDNZ 09:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC) ⍧
 * The original is very bad; and AFAIK there are no real good prints at all. The report has been published photomechanically from bad sources. Even the microfiche version is not better. The combination of Dick Grune's version and my re-edition (the .dvi or .pdf, not .html) do a much better job. IIRC, the question mark is Algol68C for skip. --Glasreiniger 11:52, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I could not access the document, a html permission problem. I know Victoria University has the paper Algol Bulletin, maybe they have an original RR.  I can search the local universities.  Actually the cheif reason I want to look is to check to see what the "strange" characters look like in print.  I had to laugh, Algol_60 (http://eli-project.sourceforge.net/a60_html/a60.html) has "subscript 10" also, but they gave up and simply called it "E".  As you suggest, somewhere in Europe subscript 10 was important... in the 1960s.
 * BTW: I tried emailing you, but got no reply.
 * Sorry. The permission is fixed now. --Glasreiniger 11:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * ⍧ NevilleDNZ 09:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC) ⍧

Re structuring this document
So far, I have added a tiny section on the transput, and a tiny bit to the section on operators, and some code for parallel processing. They seem to fit in OK. There is not much mention about bits and bytes and such representations. FR vs RR and Extensions etc

Already we have reached the 32k recommended article size. Is it time for a revision/pruning? What have we missed that is notable? Having said that it looks basically OK to me so far.

One book I read years ago on A68 could have its sections read "horizontally and vertically" out of a grid. This highlights that A68 was designed to be orthogonal. Do U know the Author/Title of this book? Could we structure an article like this?

⍧ NevilleDNZ 17:37, 28 September 2005 (UTC) ⍧

The book is Lindsay and van der Meulen's Informal Introduction to Algol 68. It would be interesting to structure the article that way, though I'm not sure where one would fit some of the political aspects of the language's history in that structure.

One thing that is definitely missing from the article is a discussion of "triple ref technique" which is possible only because the language allows references to non-heap objects. A Rosetta Stone-style listing of linked list manipulation in ALGOL 68, Pascal, and C might be the way to show the technique's advantages.

 * A discussion of the triple REF technique is needed, indeed. IMHO this hasn't do too much with heap vs. non-heap, as Algol-68 can easily be implemented without LOC at all (just make all allocations on heap). I have prepared some variations on the theme in []. The file queuea.a68 is due to Andy Walker (discussion in news:comp.lang.misc) except for the complaint in the commentary, of course. queueb.a68 changes the original file by lifting the REF up to mode LIST. queuee.a68 makes the algorithm parallel-safe, hopefully. I like queuef.a68, because it uses operators instead of functions. In queueg.a68 I modified the program to avoid triple REFs. Yes, this is easy: Just wrap one of the levels into a STRUCT. For syntactical reasons, a second field dummy in this STRUCT is needed. --Glasreiniger 13:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Ack, you're absolutely right. The point is that unlike Pascal, which only allows pointers to records, Algol 68 allows references to things of any mode, including ref ref amode (i.e. variables of type ref amode, in particular those where references to heads of lists or roots of trees are stored), hence the name. My mistake.

Just a quotation ...
I came across the following, years ago. (I won't vouch for its precision, though.) I don't agree with it, but, here it is anyway:

"If PL/1 is a fatal disease, then is not Algol 68 just _capital punishment_?"

12.216.178.59 00:06, 20 February 2006

This quote might be a pun on case-stropping where the published form " begin real pi=4*atan(1)  end " would be written as case-stropped " ". I remember that case-stropping (changing case for "Syntatic elements", MODEs and OPerators) was a pain on keyboards that had only caps-lock (ansi) and but useful on shift-Lock keyboards (IBM). I finally discovered a keyboard that had both manufactured by Tandem-Computers.

NevilleDNZ 11:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

wiki2wirthy.py - convert html4 markup and unicode to Algol68 "Wirthy" 7-bit characters
My apologies to compiler writers (and python unicode experts) for this terribly crude parser... For wot is it wirth... I declare the above code to be GPL.

NevilleDNZ 13:07, 13 June 2007 (UTC) revised for html4

ALGOL 68 definitely not the ancestor of C, C++, sh or bash
99. On the other hand, both SIMULA-67 and CPL draw heavily on ALGOL 60. ALGOL 60 is the ancestor. ALGOL 68 is, as far as I can tell, more of an evolutionary dead end. -Dmh 19:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) C++ was originally a front end built on top of C and drawing heavily on SIMULA-67 (which obviously predates ALGOL 68).
 * 2) C was a successor to B, itself a trimmed-down version of BCPL, itself a trimmed-down version of CPL, which again predates ALGOL 68
 * 3) sh and bash have nothing at all to do with ALGOL 68 apart from being procedural langauges.
 * C, sh and bash are weakly typed.

re: Is ALGOL 68 an ancestor of C, C++, sh or bash?
1. re: C++
 * "Stroustrup borrowed successful features from other older languages. As a result, C++ incorporates the concepts of classes and virtual functions from Simula67. C++ borrows the idea of operator overloading from Algol 68. These features are an important part of the support that C++ provides for object-oriented programming."

2. Re: C Steve talked Dennis into adding void as a type in C. It saved the instruction loading register for return value. Also when Steve got to the lab C types were like PL/1 namely offsets from any base you liked. They changed to A68 types but be the specific reason for this change is now lost. A few other A68isms ended up in C. (Subsequently these A68isms made their way into C++).
 * 1) * "C does not descend from Algol 68 is true, yet..." - Dennis Ritchie.

3. Re: Bourne Shell
 * The - Bourne shell source telling an interesting story of Algol68's influence on the Bourne shell. Bourne reused portions of ALGOL 68's " ", " " and " " clauses in the common Unix Bourne shell syntax. Moreover - although the v7 shell is written in C - Bourne took advantage of some macros to give the C source code an ALGOL 68 flavor.

I would suspect (but I cannot back it up with a quote) that the parallelism in the Bourne shell was a direct result of the PAR clause in Algol68. eg However Algol68 didn't get pipes until arriving on Unix, and the pipe behavior is not part of the standard.
 * Shell:  (sleep 10 ; date ) & ( sleep 20; date) & (sleep 30; date)
 * Algol68: PAR ( (sleep(10); date ), ( sleep(20); date) , (sleep(30); date) )

Shell and Algol68 are unusual in that both are early examples of concurrency which is mostly absent from other standard languages of the time. (PL/I had/has the TASK keyword)

4. Re: C, sh and bash are weakly typed.
 * True. Algol68 and python are the only two languages I know that have strong dynamic typing.  I don't know how this happened and looking for hints.  Check out struct, union & [:]: Structures, unions and arrays for the " mode  node =" example.

5. Re: ADA Influences
 * Extract from: http://archive.adaic.com/pol-hist/history/holwg-93/2.htm (source: portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1057816&type=pdf)
 * Without exception, the following languages were found by the evaluators to be inappropriate to serve as base languages for a development of the common language: FORTRAN, COBOL, TACPOL, CMS-2, JOVIAL J-73, JOVIAL J-3B, SIMULA 67, ALGOL 60, and CORAL 66.
 * Proposals should be solicited from appropriate language designers for modification efforts using any of the languages, Pascal, PL/I, or ALGOL 68 as a base language from which to start. These efforts should be directed toward the production of a language that satisfied the DoD set of language requirements for embedded computer applications.
 * Ada - DoD HOLWG, Col Wm Whitaker, 1993

I don't know what the complete list of functionality originally from ALGOL 68 is. Maybe concurrency, operators, overloading & strong typing. These were mostly missing from ALGOL 60.

So I can say with certainty that Algol68 influenced C, to quote "there was influence, much of it so subtle that it is hard to recover even when I think hard." -Dennis Ritchie, 18 June 1988

99. re: Evolutionary Dead end. ALGOL 68 was the first (and possibly one of the last) major language for which a full formal definition was made before it was implemented.
 * IMHO: Algol68 was an experiment in both language design, and in collaborating in language design. Both of these disiplines were in their early stages of evolution.
 * Certainly the prominent compiler writers for ALGOL 60 were prominent in the ALGOL Bulletin "mailing list", but strangely none of them were on the actual core ALGOL 68 team. Maybe this caused C99's ratification to be delayed 31 years? :-)

NevilleDNZ 23:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

a 2nd re: to dmh
IMHO you are right in A68 being a dead end. Now we know that it was a mistake to introduce pointers into a HLL. But AFAIK till the advent of Java this has not been corrected in the more successful languages.

 * Algol 68 is a language with precise garbage collection and type-safe access to memory so, like Java, it has references, not pointers. A reference is something that can be made to refer to another value. References are needed for recursive structures such as trees and linked lists, and for modifying variables. Since all values in Algol 68 are immutable, references are how Algol 68 implements mutability. There is no pointer arithmetic or pointer casting in Algol 68, since that would violate its type system and memory model. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.196.148.37 (talk) 00:10, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sh is not comparable to a programming language. But the facts, which Neville reports, are correct, at least in the main parts. One exception is the parallelism. The & Operator has been in use in V6 Unix, but not the if - fi bracketing construct, which is due to Bourne, who has been one of the first A68 compiler writers.

 * Agreed, postfix "&" would appear to predate A68's influence on the Bourne shell in v7.  A coincidence only! :-( The "&" is certainly unique in both it's simplicity and similarity. It would be interesting to know what the inspiration for the v6 "&" was. NevilleDNZ 19:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Another clear influence is the lack of distinction between statements and expressions in /bin/sh. Rp (talk) 09:45, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It is simply a misunderstanding of the article text, if you read the wording heritage as being ancestor. --Glasreiniger 14:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

What the heck does that mean?
The opening paragraph...what in the heck does any of that mean to the average reader? Is there someone who can translate all that into layman-ese? 64.186.231.74 (talk) 00:57, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It all seems pretty clear to me, but ALGOL 68 was my first programming language. Can you please explain what isn't clear to you and what, in this context, you consider to be a layman?  Someone who has some idea of what a computer is?  Someone who can read English?  Without more specific questions it's very difficult to guess what sort of improvement you're looking for. Rp (talk) 22:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Proceduring
This Text:

As defined in ALGOL 68, it did not work as expected, for example in the code:

if false andf ( print ("Should not be executed"); true) then ...

against the programmers naïve expectations the print would be executed as it is the result of the enclosed-clause after andf that was procedured.

fails to explain that

if false andf proc bool: ( print ("Should not be executed"); true) then ...

would have worked. So the fault is not proceduring, but the wrong description in the unrevised report which fails. --Glasreiniger (talk) 06:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Uh ... no. The goal of proceduring was to be able to write the former to mean the latter, so if it didn't achieve that, it was broken. 15:41, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Use of 'DECIMAL EXPONENT SYMBOL' (U+23E8)
Is this correct? If so, why is there no glyph for it? Attys (talk) 00:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

'DECIMAL EXPONENT SYMBOL' is part of "The Unicode Standard 6.0"
 * http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf
 * http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/23e8/index.htm

I am not sure which OSes use Unicode6.0.0, it could be that you need to upgrade, or download DecimalExponent.ttf and install:
 * Install and configure Unicode TrueType fonts in Linux
 * Vijay Kumar's Blog: How to install TTF/OTF fonts in linux

NJoy NevilleDNZ (talk) 04:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

syntaxhighlight tag changes by user:Boshomi
Yow. What is the point of replacing this:

int n = 2; co n is a fixed constant of 2.co int m := 3; co m is a newly created local variable whose value is initially set to 3. This is short for ref int m = loc int := 3; co real avogadro = 6.0221415⏨23; co Avogadro's number co long long real pi = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510; compl square root of minus one = 0 ⊥ 1

Which looks like Algol68 by this:

int n = 2; co n is a fixed constant of 2.co int m := 3; co m is a newly created local variable whose value is initially set to 3. This is short for ref int m = loc int := 3; co real avogadro = 6.0221415⏨23; co Avogadro's number co long long real pi = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510; compl square root of minus one = 0 ⊥ 1

Which looks like nothing on earth. HughesJohn (talk) 09:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, it turns out that GeSHi can do a half-assed job if the source is UPPER stropped:

INT n = 2; CO n is a fixed constant of 2.CO INT m := 3; CO m is a newly created local variable whose value is initially set to 3. This is short for REF INT m = LOC INT := 3; CO REAL avogadro = 6.0221415⏨23; CO Avogadro's number CO LONG LONG REAL pi = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510; COMPL square root of minus one = 0 ⊥ 1

But it's still not very pretty. (multi-line comments are not handled for example) HughesJohn (talk) 10:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

 * You are right! it's still not very pretty. The colours are ugly. I like blue colour for keywords and green vor comments.

So i will stop my work at this page. I think a reformating would be nice, when we get a better highlighting form the wikimedia project.

i have found the algol68.php file, used by mediawiki for source and syntaxhighlight tag: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi This file should be replaced by a better one. This file is not too complicat:

folder: /Syntaxhighlight_GeSHi/geshi/geshi/ filename: algol68 --Boshomi (talk) 19:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC) Hi... I agree with the comments about highlight ugliness... I'll chat to BenBE about adding the common "stropping regimes". Maybe we can have:

 * URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Algol_strict/styles.css

As yet the standard extension (formerly known as SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi) does not otherwise support Algol 68's formal stropping.

The programmer who writes executable code does not always have an option of bold typeface or underlining in the code as this may depend on hardware and cultural issues. Different methods to denote these identifiers have been devised. This is called a stropping regime. For example, all or some of the following may be available programming representations:

int a real int = 3; # the strict language # 'INT'A REAL INT = 3; # QUOTE stropping style # .INT A REAL INT = 3; # POINT stropping style # INT a real int = 3; # UPPER stropping style # int a_real_int = 3; # RES stropping style, there are 61 accepted reserved words #

All implementations must recognize at least POINT, UPPER and RES inside PRAGMAT sections. Of these, POINT and UPPER stropping are quite common, while RES stropping is a contradiction to the specification (as there are no reserved words). QUOTE (single apostrophe quoting) was the original recommendation, while matched apostrophe quoting, common in ALGOL 60, is not used much in ALGOL 68.

The following characters were recommended for portability, and termed "worthy characters" in the Report on the Standard Hardware Representation of Algol 68 :

This reflected a problem in the 1960s where some hardware didn't support lower-case, nor some other non-ASCII characters, indeed in the 1973 report it was written: "Four worthy characters — "|", "_", "[", and "]" — are often coded differently, even at installations which nominally use the same character set."
 * Worthy Characters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789 "#$%'*+,-./:;<=>@[ ]_|
 * Base characters: "Worthy characters" are a subset of "base characters".

par: Parallel processing - with BOLD stropping example
Code appears as BOLDED lowercase, but a physical cut and pastes of code produces uppercase.

ALGOL 68 supports programming of parallel processing. Using the keyword PAR, a collateral clause is converted to a parallel clause, where the synchronisation of actions is controlled using semaphores. In A68G the parallel actions are mapped to threads when available on the hosting operating system. In A68S a different paradigm of parallel processing was implemented (see below).

PROC eat = VOID: ( muffins-:=1; print(("Yum!",new line))), speak = VOID: ( words-:=1; print(("Yuk...",new line))); INT muffins := 4, words := 8; SEMA mouth = LEVEL 1; PAR BEGIN WHILE muffins > 0 DO DOWN mouth; eat; UP mouth OD, WHILE words > 0 DO DOWN mouth; speak; UP mouth OD

END

Example of different program representations
ALGOL 68 allows for every natural language to define its own set of keywords Algol-68. As a result, programmers are able to write programs using keywords from their native language. Below is an example of a simple procedure that calculates "the day following", the code is in two languages: English and German.

title: Talk:ALGOL 68


text:
Villa El Salvador

The Savior Town District is an urban, largely residential coastal district on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. It borders the district of Chorrillos on the east; the Pacific Ocean on the southwest; Lurín on the southeast; Villa María del Triunfo on the east and San Juan de Miraflores on the north.

History
Villa El Salvador began in 1971 as a squatted pueblo joven (or shanty town) in the vast, empty sand flats to the south of Lima because of the urgent housing needs of immigrant families who had left the sierra of central Peru. A land invasion quickly created a town of 25,000 people. By 2008, it had grown to 350,000 people. Villa El Salvador evolved into a huge urban zone, largely self-organizing, for which it won some fame. Largely through the efforts of its inhabitants, the neighborhood was supplied with electricity, water, and sewage.

Villa El Salvador served as the home base for the activist María Elena Moyano, who helped organize the Federación Popular de Mujeres de Villa El Salvador (Fepomuves), a federation of women, which grew to encompass activities such as public kitchens, health committees, the Vaso de Leche program (which supplied children with milk), income-generating projects, and committees for basic education. Moyano was killed by members of the Shining Path, which used Villa El Salvador as a base in Lima.

Since June 1, 1983, Villa El Salvador has been formally (by law № 23605) established as a district within the Lima Province. In 1987, the community received a Prince of Asturias Award in recognition of its achievements. Villa El Salvador is twinned with Rezé, France and, since 2006, with Tübingen, Germany.

Mayors

 * 2019–2022: Kevin Íñigo Peralta.
 * 2011–2014: Guido Íñigo Peralta.
 * 2003–2010: Jaime Zea Usca.
 * 1999–2002: Martín Pumar Vílchez.

Festivities

 * October: Lord of Miracles

Twin towns

 * Arnhem in Gelderland, Netherlands
 * Amstelveen in North Holland, Netherlands
 * 🇩🇪 Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Villa El Salvador


text:
List of peaks in the Yorkshire Dales

This is a list of the peaks in the Yorkshire Dales. To avoid the list becoming infinitely long and arbitrary, only hills with more than 30 m relative height are included. This includes all Marilyns and Hewitts as well as many other hills. Marilyns are peaks in the British Isles with 150 m of relative height; Hewitts are peaks in England, Ireland and Wales over 2000 ft (610 m) elevation, with at least 30 m relative height. There are 22 Marilyns and 28 Hewitts in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Topographically, the boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales trace the flow of streams from the lowest points between it and the neighbouring regions of the Lake District, North Pennines, Forest of Bowland, South Pennines and North York Moors.

Hills are grouped as topographically as possible, according to their 'parent Marilyn'. The parent Marilyn of hill A can be found by dividing the nearby area into territories, by tracing the runoff from the key col of each Marilyn. The parent is the Marilyn whose territory hill A resides in. Marilyns are given in bold, followed by the hills within their territories, which are delineated in the map.

In the table headers, H stands for height and RH for relative height.

Northern Dales
{| width="100%"
 * valign="top" width="50%" |

West of Mallerstang

 * valign="top" width="50%" |

Swaledale to Wensleydale

 * }

Southern Dales
{| width="100%"
 * valign="top" width="50%" |

East

 * valign="top" width="50%" |

South-east

 * }

title: List of peaks in the Yorkshire Dales


text: Category:Presidents of Togo

title: Category:Presidents of Togo


text:
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Anthony DiPierro 2/Proposed decision

all proposed

Arbitrators should vote for or against each point or abstain.
 * Only items that receive a majority aye vote will be enacted.
 * Items that receive a majority nay vote will be formally rejected.
 * Items that do not receive a majority aye or nay vote will be open to possible amendment by any Arbitrator if he so chooses. After the amendment process is complete, the item will be voted on one last time.

Conditional votes for or against and abstentions should be explained by the Arbitrator before or after his/her time-stamped signature. For example, an Arbitrator can state that she/he would only favor a particular remedy based on whether or not another remedy/remedies were enacted.

On this case, 5 Arbitrators are recused and 1 is inactive, so 4 votes are a majority.

Proposed wording to be modified by Arbitrators and then voted on.
 * For all items:

Motions and requests by the parties
Place those on the discussion page.

Proposed temporary injunctions
Four net aye votes needed to pass (each nay vote subtracts an aye) 24 hours from the first vote is normally the fastest an injunction will be imposed.

Template
1) {text of proposed orders}

 * Aye:

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

=Proposed final decision=

Userpages
1) A user may say whatever he/she wants on his/her user page within reason (e.g. No personal attacks). However, Wikipedia is not a hosting service, and you should generally avoid any substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. (See Userpage.)

 * Aye:
 * As from Libertas. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 19:23, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:56, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) with the proviso that use of user pages and user subpages as scratch areas is not necessarily discouraged.
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 15:32, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * I will support if "Wikipedia is not a hosting sevice" or words to that effect are added. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Done. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 23:51, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

 * Abstain:

Deletion of content from userspace
1.5) Deleting content from the user namespace or adding deletion tags to content in the User namespace without the affected user's permission is discouraged.

 * Aye:
 * I feel this is common sense. Agree with rewording. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * Proposed rewording ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:59, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Speedy deletion of recreations of deleted articles
2) If content is recreated in the main Wikipedia namespaces after having been deleted (via votes for deletion or speedy deletion, it may be speedily deleted. (See Criteria for speedy deletion.)

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 19:23, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:58, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Civility
3) Wikipedia users are expected to behave civilly and calmly in their dealings with other users. If disputes arise, users are expected to utilise dispute resolution procedures instead of merely attacking each other.

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 19:26, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:58, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Assume good faith
4) Assume good faith. This keeps the project workable in the face of many widely variant points-of-view and avoids inadvertent personal attacks and disruption through creation of an unfriendly editing environment.

 * Aye:
 * Imported from Xed. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 19:33, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:59, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Recreation of deleted material I
1) Anthony DiPierro has attempted to recreate material at User:Anthony DiPierro/Shawn Mikula which had previously been deleted at Shawn Mikula.

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:21, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 19:59, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Recreation of deleted material II
2.1) The recreation of the deleted content at User:Anthony DiPierro/Shawn Mikula does not constitute recreation of the article Shawn Mikula.

 * Aye:
 * I feel the idea behind the article is the same, but it is not in article namespace and should not be considered an article. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:22, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Not an article. mav 20:00, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

2.2) The recreation of the deleted content at User:Anthony DiPierro/Shawn Mikula does constitute recreation of the article Shawn Mikula.

 * Aye:

 * Nay:
 * I feel the idea behind the article is the same, but it is not in article namespace and should not be considered an article. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:22, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Abstain:

Protection of Shawn Mikula
3) The intent of the protection of Shawn Mikula as a blank page was to prevent vandalism in the form of recreation of an article deleted according to the proper process. Such actions do not constitute abuse of administrator powers.

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:23, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Revert warring
4) Anthony DiPierro has engaged in an unhelpful amount of revert warring in order to promote his recreation of the content of Shawn Mikula in his userspace, among other disputes.

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:24, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Incivility / assumption of bad faith
5) Anthony DiPierro has at times been incivil during the course of the above dispute, apparently based on an assumption of bad faith as indicated by accusations of instigating edit wars, etc. ,

 * Aye:
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:08, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * he has certainly been uncivil, but I'm not prepared to conclude that his assumption of bad faith, if it existed, was inappropriate. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)Agree strongly with Epopt.

 * Abstain:
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

5.1)Anthony DiPierro has at times been incivil during the course of the above dispute. ,
 * Aye:
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) (let's take motives out)
 * ➥the Epopt 04:21, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * (Where did my vote here go?) -- Grunt 🇪🇺 04:44, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 14:00, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:02, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Abstain:
 * Abstain:

Previous arbitration
6) There was a previous arbitration concerning Anthony DiPierro, see Requests for arbitration/Anthony DiPierro. Evidence concerning Votes for deletion are at Requests for arbitration/Anthony DiPierro/Evidence. Other evidence is at Requests for arbitration/Anthony DiPierro/Old evidence. The decision, at Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro provided:

1. The arbitration committee instructs Anthony to refrain from playing around and making provocative edits on VfD and associated pages. The arbitration committee does not object to which way Anthony voted, only the manner in which he voted.

2. The issues of Anthony's reverts and alleged trolling are referred to the mediation committee.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 21:38, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * mav 20:03, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:48, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:49, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Settlement of previous arbitration by agreement
7) As the result of mediation Raul654 and Anthony DiPierro made an agreement on July 24, 2004, see the standing order.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 21:38, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * mav 20:04, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:48, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Provisions of the settlement agreement
8) "If Anthony should, for any reason, make a provocactive edit (that is, an edit which is "trolling", "disruptive", and/or "antisocial" as interpreted by an admin) or engage in an edit war, an admin, may at his discretion, block Anthony for a period of 24 hours, not subject to the normal warnings and protections afforded other users.

At six month intervals, three members of the mediation committee (enumerated below) should vote on whether or not Anthony has reformed. If two or more of those members should agree that Anthony has reformed, this agreement is considered fullfilled and over. Otherwise, the agreement should be renewed for another six months. Should one of those members leave, Anthony and Raul654 must agree on a replacement (who must be a member of the mediation commitee).

If Anthony should attempt to evade a ban or block (for any reason), he is considered in breach of this agreement and subject to immediate arbitration.

If at any time Anthony feels that this agreement is unduly restrictive of his ability to make clearly legitimate edits, he may withdraw from the agreement and go directly to arbitration."

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 21:38, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Agree with Grunt Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Abstain:
 * Stating the text of the agreement verbatim isn't necessary in the context of this case; the previous FoF will be sufficient. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * Agree with Grunt. --mav 20:04, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:50, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Six month review
9) The six month review provided for in the agreement was held and resulted in the extension of the agreement for three months due to evidence of isolated instances of disruptive behavior, see Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Standing_orders/Anthony.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 23:16, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Noting the use of the term "isolated instances". -- Grunt 🇪🇺 23:18, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * mav 20:06, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:50, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:54, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Withdrawal from the agreement
10) The settlement agreement provided an option for Anthony to withdraw from the agreement and go directly to arbitration, thus activating the original arbitration. Anthony did so on 26 Feb 2005.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 21:38, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * mav 20:06, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:54, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Disruptive behavior by Anthony I
11) The evidence in the original arbitration includes numerous instances of disruptive behavior by Anthony which occured in the first part of 2004.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 21:53, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Grunt 🇪🇺 22:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * mav 20:07, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 23:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 17:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Disruptive behavior by Anthony II
12) With the exception of the incidents outlined in findings 1 and 4 above, Anthony has not recently engaged in significant amounts of disruptive behaviour.

 * Aye:
 * I feel this to be true. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:04, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)
 * For sufficiently small values of "recently" and "significant," sure ➥the Epopt 15:19, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Fred Bauder 23:16, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC) see Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Standing_orders/Anthony

 * Abstain:
 * Fred Bauder 22:15, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC) I think we need to see some recent evidence before a remedy limiting his general editing is approved.

Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Revert limitation
1) Anthony DiPierro is limited to one revert (per article) per twenty-four hour period for a period of three months. Violations of this shall be treated as violations of the three-revert rule, and shall cause the three months to reset.

 * Aye:
 * I note that Anthony has previously stated he would be willing to abide by this. See . -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:14, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 03:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:08, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

Recreation limitation
2) Anthony DiPierro is instructed that if a page is properly deleted via votes for deletion and votes for undeletion fails to get the article recreated then he is not permitted to recreate that article in any namespace on Wikipedia for a period of three months after the vote for undeletion fails. Any violation of this rule will be a candidate for speedy deletion.

 * Aye:
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 21:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 23:00, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sensible enough; just make sure the VfU doesn't get obstructed. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 23:53, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 04:21, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:08, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) I don't think there are any substantive harms to Wikipedia, whether financial, as in the usage of storage and bandwidth, or reputational, as in the inclusion of content which has been deemed inappropriate, in harboring deleted articles in user namespace subpages, as long as those articles aren't actively linked to or from articles in the main namespaces. If there are more than a handful of such pages harbored in user subpages, then I would consider it to be a violation of the "Wikipedia is not a hosting service" policy, but harboring a small number of such pages has no potential for substantial harm.
 * I'm pulling my support for this because we've basically affirmed above that users are most likely allowed to recreate deleted material in userspace. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 17:56, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

 * Abstain:

Bans for disruption
3) If Anthony should, for any reason, make a provocative edit (that is, an edit which is "trolling", "disruptive", and/or "antisocial" as interpreted by an admin) or engage in an edit war, an admin, may at his discretion, block Anthony for a period of 24 hours.

 * Aye:
 * Enough is enough. I don't want an Anthony 3. --mav 05:23, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Anthony has annoyed too many admins; they would find the temptation too much ➥the Epopt 04:21, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * What if we added "all such blocks must be posted on WP:AN/I"? That way other admins can review and undo overzealous blocks. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 06:24, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 13:58, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC) See alternative below
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Abstain:
 * I am still (slightly?) concerned about potentially disruptive behaviour here, and much sentiment has been expressed in favour of this. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 02:41, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

3.1) For one year, if Anthony should, for any reason, make a provocative edit (that is, an edit which is "trolling", "disruptive", and/or "antisocial" as interpreted by an admin) or engage in an edit war, an admin, may at his discretion, block Anthony for a period of one hour.

 * Aye:
 * Fred Bauder 13:58, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 20:12, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 15:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 19:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * Nohat 20:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) Revert limitation is sufficient.

 * Abstain:
 * I remain hesitant about implementing an action of this nature. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 18:36, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

Ban from editing the Wikipedia namespace
4) Anthony DiPierro is banned from editing in the Wikipedia namespace for a period of one year due to the fact that almost all the disputed behavior he has engaged in has occurred in that namespace. Edits to requests for arbitration, mediation, and RfCs that he is involved in are excepted. Also if Anthony's behaviour is being disccused on a page in the Wikipedia namespace then he is permitted to put one post where he can explain his actions and invite people to come to his talk page to discuss things. Note that Anthony is not permitted to initiate such discussions, he is only allowed to respond to them.

Should he violate this order, he may be blocked for up to a week by an administrator. After 3 months he can appeal to the ArbCom to review the matter and the ArbCom can then choose to keep or modify the order.

 * Aye:
 * Add other pages in the Wikipedia namespace that should be exempted. mav 05:51, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fred Bauder 13:29, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
 * ➥the Epopt 15:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 19:54, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Nay:
 * This is too extreme, and there's no associated FoF. -- Grunt 🇪🇺
 * The FoF is built in and implied by all the evidence (which massively refers to pages in the Wikipedia namespace). This is not 'extreme' given the huge amount of disruption caused and the paucity of edits that actually improve the encyclopedia. Remember, we are here to create an encyclopedia first and foremost and that is something that Anthony is not helping much with by concentrating nearly all his efforts in editing the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces (not to mention the huge amounts of wasted time by others that are trying to work toward our primary goal). Hopefully this will steer him into the right direction and away from further disruption (thus possibly avoiding what seems inevitable without this remedy - Anthony 3). --mav 22:32, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Abstain:
 * I'm concerned about the wording. What if someone goes to the village pump or the administrator's noticeboard and complains there that Anthony is doing something they don't like? As it stands he can't defend himself or explain his actions. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 22:08, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Template
1) {text of proposed enforcement}

 * Aye:

 * Nay:

 * Abstain:

=Discussion by Arbitrators=

Old motion to close
Four net Aye votes needed to close case (each Nay vote subtracts an Aye) 24 hours from the first motion is normally the fastest a case will close.

Aye

 * Move closing case Fred Bauder 16:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Nay

 * I feel that we may not have covered everything related to this dispute. I'd at least like to see one or two more arbitrators have a look at everything before we close the case. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 16:17, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
 * Not yet. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 06:25, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Motion to close
Four net Aye votes needed to close case (each Nay vote subtracts an Aye) 24 hours from the first motion is normally the fastest a case will close.

 * We have a deadlock with no reasonable prospect of resolution. I would warn Anthony that should Anthony 3 be necessary any hesitations we have about imposing a substantial remedy may not apply Fred Bauder 10:23, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * With the note that another case is probably inevitable, given the behaviour of the involved disputants. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 17:54, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)
 * I think we are all done now. Theresa Knott (ask the rotten) 19:56, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Aye ➥the Epopt 05:41, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * mav 06:40, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Object:
 * Still some proposed remedies on the talk page I'd like to investigate this weekend. --mav 01:48, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Done doing that. Added a new remedy. --mav 05:54, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


text:
Quebec City–Windsor Corridor

The Quebec City–Windsor Corridor (Corridor Québec-Windsor) is the most densely populated and heavily industrialized region of Canada. As its name suggests, the 1150 km-long region extends from Quebec City in the northeast and Windsor, Ontario in the southwest. With more than 18 million people, it contains about half of the country's population and three of Canada's four and seven of Canada's 12 largest metropolitan areas (based on the 2016 census). Its relative importance to Canada's economic and political infrastructure renders it akin to the Northeast megalopolis in the United States. The name was first popularized by Via Rail, which runs frequent passenger rail service in the region in its service area known as "The Corridor".

Geography
The corridor extends from Quebec City, Quebec, in the northeast to Windsor, Ontario, in the southwest, running north of the Saint Lawrence River, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. For most of its length, the corridor runs through a narrow strip of farmland with the Canadian Shield to the north and the Appalachian Mountains or the Great Lakes to the south. A drive of only a few minutes north from cities or towns along the eastern two-thirds of the corridor will show an abrupt change from flat farmland and limestone bedrock to the granite hills of the shield. The highways in this part of the corridor often run right on the boundary of the shield, and it is possible to observe the frequent change from limestone to granite in rockcuts along the way. There are, however, several wider areas of flat farmland, including the southwestern Ontario Peninsula between Lake Huron and Lake Erie (which makes up the western third of the corridor), the eastern Ontario delta from Ottawa to the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers at Montreal, and the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal. There is also a minor Great Lakes corridor of stratified limestone called the Niagara Escarpment.

Because of the moderating influence of the Great Lakes and the frequent influx of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the corridor—particularly the western half—has a markedly warmer climate than the rest of Quebec and Ontario. The rich soil and the warm climate mean that the flora and fauna in the corridor are similar to those in the deciduous forests of the eastern United States as far south as Virginia, rather than the evergreen boreal forest that covers most of central Canada up to the Arctic. The forest in southwestern Ontario is often referred to as Carolinian forest.

Population

According to the 2006 Canadian Census, more than 94% of Ontario's population lives in its portion of the corridor. Similarly, more than 65% of Quebec's population lives in or close to Montreal and Quebec City. About half of Canada's total population live between Quebec City and Windsor.

The three major census metropolitan areas (CMAs) in the Corridor are (populations as of 2021):

 * Greater Toronto Area (6,202,225)
 * Greater Montreal (4,291,732)
 * National Capital Region (1,488,307)

The remaining census metropolitan areas along the corridor are:

 * Quebec City (839,311)
 * Hamilton (785,184)
 * Kitchener–Waterloo–Cambridge (575,847)
 * London (543,551)
 * St. Catharines – Niagara (433,604)
 * Windsor (422,630)
 * Oshawa (415,311)
 * Sherbrooke (227,398)
 * Barrie (212,856)
 * Kingston (172,546)
 * Guelph (165,588)
 * Trois-Rivières (161,489)
 * Peterborough (147,681)
 * Brantford (144,162)
 * Belleville (111,184)
 * Drummondville (101,610)

Other significant urban areas along the corridor include Chatham-Kent, Sarnia, Granby, Kawartha Lakes, and Cornwall.

French rule
During the French colonization, this area of New France was named Canada and was a single administrative unit under the governor-general (with regional deputy governors in some cities). However, only the eastern third of the corridor, from Quebec City to Montreal, was heavily settled. The major cross-country route used by voyageurs in the fur trade continued west from Montreal through the Canadian Shield along the Ottawa Valley to Lake Nipissing and Georgian Bay, passing far to the north of what would later become the Ontario part of the corridor. The lack of good farmland made that route unsuitable for settlement, however, and the frequent portages made transportation in boats larger than canoes difficult.

During the North American part of the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France, the settlements along the corridor were at the centre of the conflicts. New France, including the areas that make up the Corridor, were ceded to Great Britain at the end of the conflict; formalized with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

British rule
When the English-speaking United Empire Loyalists arrived in the Province of Quebec as a result of the American Revolution, they settled along the narrow strip north of the St. Lawrence River and lower Great Lakes, where good farm land was available and larger boats could be used for transportation. These people formed the English-speaking nucleus of what later became Ontario. By contrast, many of the Ontario towns along the old fur-trading and logging route to the north, through the Ottawa Valley and westward, still have significant French-speaking populations. Initially, Kingston was the principal city of the English half of the corridor, but eventually Toronto outgrew it. As a result of the influx of migrants, the Province of Quebec was split into two new colonies, Lower and Upper Canada; with administration over the Corridor split between the two Canadas. During the War of 1812, the settlements along the corridor were at the centre of the conflicts. The Rideau Canal was constructed to provide a way to bypass the most vulnerable part of the corridor, from Cornwall to Kingston, situated close to the Canada-U.S. border. After the Rebellions of 1837–1838, the two Canadas were united to form the Province of Canada. Ottawa was eventually chosen as Canada's capital by Queen Victoria precisely because it was further inland and thus less vulnerable to attack, though it is now also considered part of the corridor.

Confederated Canada
The construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway during the late 1950s made it possible for some ocean-going vessels to travel the full length of the corridor and beyond to the upper Great Lakes, but resulted in the destruction of several villages in the Eastern Ontario portion of the corridor.

Transportation
The corridor is held together by a series of major transportation routes – water, road, rail, and air — all running close together and sometimes overlapping each other. These routes are anchored by Ontario Highway 401, the busiest highway in North America from Windsor leading into Quebec Autoroute 20 to Montreal and Quebec City.

Airports
The major passenger airports along the corridor are Toronto Pearson International Airport, Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport, Québec/Jean Lesage International Airport, Hamilton/John C. Munro International Airport, and the military airbase at CFB Trenton.

Other civilian corridor airports with scheduled airline service include Windsor Airport, Sarnia (Chris Hadfield) Airport, London International Airport, Region of Waterloo International Airport, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Kingston/Norman Rogers Airport, Lake Simcoe Regional Airport and Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport. Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is a large facility near Montreal that is mainly used for cargo flights but is also home to medical evacuation and general aviation flights.

Inside the corridor, the busiest area of travel is the Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal triangle. There are roughly 108 flights within the Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal triangle every work day, making it the busiest air route in Canada and 15th busiest air route in the world. Air Canada serves the three cities with its Rapidair service, offering hourly flights, and its principal competitor WestJet offers similar service. Air Canada and Porter Airlines fly from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to Ottawa and Montreal, while Air Canada Jazz offers commuter flights connecting many of the smaller airports to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. In addition to scheduled air service, some of the airports along the corridor also have frequent charter flights like Air Transat and Sunwing to popular tourist destinations.

Rail
Both the Canadian National Railway (CN) and the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) have extensive freight railway lines along the length of the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. Intercity passenger railway service is provided by Via Rail throughout the region, mostly using CN freight lines. Referred to in Via Rail's published timetables as simply the Corridor, the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor is the busiest portion of the Via system, accounting for the majority of Canada's intercity passenger trains and ridership. About 67% of Via Rail's total revenue is earned on the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. Prior to Via's formation in 1978, both CN and CP operated Corridor services.

Other inter-city trains from outside the region originate and terminate at cities in the Corridor, such as Via's Canadian and Ocean. Amtrak offers two international inter-city passenger railway lines that starts in New York City with one that ends in Toronto and the other in Montreal, serving cities along the Corridor as well as in Upstate New York.

There have been various proposals and studies for high-speed railway service between Quebec City and Windsor.

Roadways
Most of the cities of the Ontario portion of the corridor were originally joined by Highway 2 (often known locally by names such as "Montreal Road," "Toronto Road," or "Kingston Road") following the routes of older stagecoach roads and the paths and trails that predated them. Highway 2 still forms the main street of many of the corridor's Ontario towns and cities (which were built around it), but large parts of the highway are now maintained by counties or municipalities rather than the province. From 1938 to 1968 the province of Ontario built Highway 401, a freeway that, aside from running more northerly nearby Kitchener instead of through Hamilton, mostly follows a similar route to Highway 2 but bypasses most of the town and city centres. The 401 is now the main transportation route of the corridor up to the Quebec border, where it becomes Autoroute 20 and continues east through the Quebec part of the corridor to Quebec City. Highway 403, which connects to the 401 at both of its ends, largely follows the route of Highway 2 between Woodstock and Toronto including through Hamilton and acts as another important main transportation artery. Highways 416 and 417 link Ottawa to Brockville on the 401 and Montreal on Autoroute 20.

Waterways
The oldest transportation route is the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, where the series of channels and locks that make up the St. Lawrence Seaway allow ocean-going vessels and lake freighters to travel the entire length of the corridor.

title: Quebec City–Windsor Corridor


text:
Talk:Shanti Sena

These links were the entire original content of this article, I'm moving them here because they may be useful, but they are likely to get it speedy deleted if left on the main page.

Nonviolent Shanti Sena as an Alternative to Terrorist and Anti-Terrorist Killing and War

Soldiers of Peace Narayan Desai and Shanti Sena, the “Peace Army” Kappa 13:31, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Shanti Sena


text:
Abdal

Abdāl (أبدال) lit : substitutes, but which can also mean "generous" [karīm] and "noble" [sharīf]) is a term used in Islamic metaphysics and Islamic mysticism, both Sunni and Shiite, to refer to a particularly important group of God's saints. In the tradition of Sunni Islam in particular, the concept attained an especially important position in the writings of the Sunni mystics and theologians, whence it appears in the works of Sunni authorities as diverse as Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 956), Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072), Ibn Asakir (d. 1076), Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (d. 1088), Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406).

It is a rank of forty saints, but more often the larger group of 356 saints in Sufi hagiography. In this theology it is said that they are only known to and appointed by Allah, and it is through their operations that the world continues to exist. The term over time has come to include a greater hierarchy of saints, all of different rank and prestige.

Etymology
"Abdal" is the plural of "Badal" or rather "Badeel", and means "those who get replaced", "those who serve as a partial replacement to the role of the prophets" or "friends of God". The Abdals are the group of true, pure believers in God. They serve God during their lifetime; when they die, they are immediately replaced by another selected by God from a larger group said to be the 500 "Akhyar", i.e., the good ones.

Leadership
The Abdals are headed by their leader, "Al-Ghawth (Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani)" ("the Helper"), who resides in Baghdad. This leader is often referred to as the Qutb, which means "Pole" in Arabic. This leader though unknown to the public is usually sought out by all of the lower ranking members of the abdal. At various times in history, shaykhs have been known to publicly claim to be the Qutb, despite the tradition of remaining outside the public eye.

Function
The missions of the Abdals are to be God's merciful subjects everywhere they reside and to render the helping blessing hand to all of God's creatures.

It is said that a Badal exists in each continent. Although the majority live in "Al-Sham (Syria),"...some live in Iraq, some in Lebanon, some in Egypt, some in Antioch, some in al-Massisa, South Africa and others live throughout the rest of the world.". They have divine powers and super-natural abilities. A person does not recognize that he is one of the Abdal until he becomes aware of his status suddenly though a revelation. It is said that a Badal can be identified through his continuous good deeds and forgiving nature. He may be rich or poor, married or bachelor, child or adult. Such concepts are established in the Sunni branch of Islam, and in particular in the latter's original Sufi schools of spiritual disciplines.

The abdal function as the keepers of equilibrium in the world and preserve it between the times when prophets are present. Varying in classification and denomination, the identity of the abdal are entirely unknown to the public and even to themselves. With the ability to transmit blessings (baraka) and perform miracles (karāmāt) the abdal as a whole are able to adequately fill the role of prophet. Similarly, it is believed that when judgement day comes, they will act as intermediaries (šafāʿa) between God and the human race.

Number
As far as the number of the abdal is concerned, there are 300 servants of Allah in the creation whose hearts are like that of Adam. There are 40 whose hearts are similar to the heart of Musa and 7 whose hearts are similar to the heart of Ibrahim. There are 5 whose hearts are like that of Jibra’il and 3 whose hearts are like that of Mika’il and one whose heart is like the heart of Israfil. When he (whose heart is like Israfil) dies, then one of the three whose heart is like Mika’il replaces him and one of the five (whose hearts are like Jibra’il) replaces him. One of the seven replaces one of the five, one of the forty replaces one of the seven and one of the 300 replaces one of the forty and a normal Muslim replaces one of the three-hundred. It is due to these 356 awliya that creation are given life and killed, due to them rain falls, vegetation grows and difficulties are removed. It is also believed that since the number of abdal is so near to the number of days in the lunar calendar, their role as a part of the cosmic order of the universe is justified.

Hierarchy
In Sufism, the Abdal are placed in a cosmic hierarchy with other orders of saintly individuals. Two descriptions of the hierarchy come from notable Sufis. One comes from the 12th century Persian Ali Hujwiri. In his divine court, there are three hundred akhyār ("excellent ones"), forty abdāl ("substitutes"), seven abrār ("piously devoted ones"), four awtād ("pillars") three nuqabā ("leaders") and one qutb.

The second version is from Ibn Arabī, who lived in Moorish Spain. It has a more exclusive structure. There are eight nujabā ("nobles"), twelve nuqabā, seven abdāl, four awtād, two a’immah ("guides"), and the qutb.

title: Abdal