Re: Forth ?

Billy Tanksley <tanksley@fallbrook.csusm.edu>

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In-reply-to: Doug Sewell: "Re: Forth ?"

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Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 23:16 PST
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From: Billy Tanksley <tanksley@fallbrook.csusm.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <zoomer-list@grot.starconn.com>
Subject: Re: Forth ?
Status: OR

On Tue, 25 Jan 1994, Doug Sewell wrote:

> In article <Pine.3.05a.9401231418.B15151-a100000@fallbrook.csusm.edu> you wrote:
> 
> Alas, my recollection/use of Forth lately is pretty bad... (back when I
> learned Forth, it was FIG forth or forth-79... so it's been a while).

That's OK.  Right now, ANY volunteers doing ANYTHING are welcome.  Kibitz!
 Advise!  Threaten!  Flame!  :)

> While an open text window (similar to the 16x64 block that character mode Forth
> implementations use) would be workable, it would be kinda tiny on a Zoomer
> screen.  Graphic support would be... well... "interesting" (as in "may you 
> live in interesting times", a Chinese curse).

Right now I am thinking of a resizable screen with full font support.  I
don't think you want to edit text on a Zoomer, but if you do, I don't mind :).

Rather than using 'screens' I would use 'pages', which could be any length
(but should contain only one definition, and thus be shorter than a
screen).  Like I said, I want to include full font support, etc.  I also
want comments to exist outside of the program text (on screens big enough).

> I've also got zero experience in coding for Geos at this point... 

You too?  :)  I'm a hacker, and I'm hacking.  GeoWorks makes nice
software, but they don't tell me anything important about it.  I'm
dissecting some of their files (the REAL small ones) to see what makes
them tick.

> I'm surprised no-one's done a Forth for Geos yet, but perhaps someone in
> comp.os.geos - which I haven't followed for some time - may have an idea or
> two.

So far, I've got one helper from Comp.Os.Geos, and I may get one more
soon-- I'll see.

I want to make this Forth easy enough that it can be used as a glorified
batch file system, and extensible enough that it will support the most
demanding programming efforts.  In version 1.0, 0 out of 2 ain't bad.

-Billy
:)