The name of the language

[pdmosses@brics.dk]

"Once bitten, twice shy," as the saying goes...  So, recalling the
bother with the original CFI acronym, which we had to abandon because
it was already in use, I've now checked on Alta Vista for references
to what appears to be the current favourite for the name of our
language: CASL.  Apart from a lot of references to http://raphael.mit.edu/:

  The MIT Computational Aerospace Sciences Laboratory (CASL) is a
  research laboratory in the Department of Aeronautics and
  Astronautics. The focus of the CASL is on the development of improved
  algorithms for modern parallel computer architectures and their
  application to the modelling of internal and external flow
  problems. The interaction between different disciplines such as
  Computational Fluid Dynamics, Structural Modelling and Optimization is
  also a central area of research.

and a few less-related uses of CASL, Alta Vista also came up with
http://www.eicon.com/partner/tpd/hostft.html:

  Crosstalk Mark 4 

  Asynchronous communications package for DOS.

  DCA Inc.
  1000 Alderman Dr.
  Alpharetta, GA, 30202-4199, USA

  Contact:        Maria Forrest
  Telephone:      (404) 442-4980
  Facsimile:      (404) 442-4399

  Crosstalk Mark 4 is an advanced communications program that offers 
  powerful solutions to a wide variety of communications needs in stand-alone 
  or LAN environments. It's the ideal program for anyone who needs to 
  design customized user interfaces, automate repetitive or complex 
  tasks, deal with a variety of communications situations, or maintain 
  more than one communications session at a time. Features such as a 
  powerful programming language called CASL, a responsive user interface, 
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  and support for up to fifteen concurrent communications sessions make 
  Crosstalk Mark 4 a product users won't outgrow. Crosstalk Mark 4 emulates 
  more than twenty popular terminals and supports popular file transfer 
  protocols such as Crosstalk, DART, Kermit, XMODEM, YMODEM, ZMODEM, 
  CompuServe B+, and FAST.

However, the CASL language referred to above seems not to be a major
one, so I don't think its existence should deter us from choosing CASL
as the name for the CoFI Algebraic Specification Language.  Please let
me know if you disagree! - especially if you had previously heard
about the Crosstalk system that provides it.

The choice of a name will be made by those attending the CoFI meetings
in Edinburgh next month.  Please send final proposals, or support for
earlier proposals, as soon as possible to cofi-language@brics.dk.
(This is not intended as a formal vote, although the meeting
participants will presumably take some account of the relative support
for the various names that have been proposed.)

Thanks

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\  /  | Peter D Mosses         <pdmosses@brics.dk> |
CoFI  | Common Framework Initiative  - Coordinator |
/  \  | WWW URL: http://www.brics.dk/Projects/CoFI |
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