#: 16327 S3/Languages
    28-Aug-92  14:42:19
Sb: #16323-Your July article
Fm: Mark Griffith 76070,41
To: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203 (X)

Bob,

I realize you arn't doing these articles for the money.  What I mean when I say
"self-assumed role as a teacher" is, you, as the author of an article that is
showing (teaching) readers how to use termcap in their programs assume the role
as a teacher whether you want to or not and whether you get paid or not.  In
that context, you and you alone are responsible for the content of your
articles, right or wrong.  Many readers will see you and what you write as
gospel because they know no better and assume that you are giving them the
correct information.  That is the point I am trying to make.  You treat the use
of the void pointer in your article only with a rather glib reference that it
makes the compiler stop complaining and that is all.  It deserves more to
prevent reader confusion.  Take it from me, this will still happen no matter
how clear you try to make it, so at least try and clear it up for most of the
readers even if all of them won't understand.

Again, I say just because the ANSI committiee comes out with a void pointer for
their own innane reasons--and it happens to work on the OSK compiler, which was
designed long before then ANSI committiee was done haggling over the name of
their still-yet-to-be standard--doesn't mean you should assume it and the other
ANSIisums will work without some trouble down the road.  Now, if the OSK
compiler was billed as being fully ANSI compliant, that would be a different
matter.  By doing this, you may be setting up a reader to assume that it is
ANSI compliant.  Now this may not be your intent or your fault, but it would be
a result of using ANSI type statements with a non-ANSI compiler and inferring
that this is OK.  Again, your role as a teacher puts you in the position to
insure these sort of things do not happen as a result of what you say.

At the least, I think you should make a better explaination of it in your next
column, and in the future, make notes that any ANSI statements you use are
flagged as such and they may or may not work on the compiler the reader is
using.

Lastly, no, I know the difference between a void pointer and a void