[comp.lang.forth] Control characters

Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM (05/29/91)

>       If you want your program to be really portable, you better figure
>       out how to write the source code with printable characters.

Obviously, I meant "without", not "with".

Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM

cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne (055908)) (05/30/91)

In article <9105291726.AA13700@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Mitch.Bradley%ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV writes:
>>       If you want your program to be really portable, you better figure
>>       out how to write the source code with printable characters.
>
>Obviously, I meant "without", not "with".
>
>Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM

No, I think you DID mean that you want to write source code WITH printable
characters - It's kind of hard to read source code that doesn't have any
printable characters :-).  (Wrote this one too late at nite?)

Anyway, the KEY/EKEY compromise seems MOSTLY ok.  I worry about the
dependencies tho - most parts of a "Standard" system will use KEY for
input, which means that it may be difficult to use standard/core words
to do input of odd characters.  I thinking that it may be a neat
idea to use vectored execution, and perhaps swap between use of KEY and
EKEY within applications.  Or maybe that makes life even more complicated.
-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program

mikeh@touch.touch.com (Mike Haas) (06/06/91)

In article <1991May30.002016.22178@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne (055908)) writes:
>
>Anyway, the KEY/EKEY compromise seems MOSTLY ok.  I worry about the
>dependencies tho - most parts of a "Standard" system will use KEY for
>input, which means that it may be difficult to use standard/core words
>to do input of odd characters.  I thinking that it may be a neat
>idea to use vectored execution, and perhaps swap between use of KEY and
>EKEY within applications.  Or maybe that makes life even more complicated.

Vectored execution IS the way to go.  However, in such a system, you would not 
"swap between the us3e of KEY & EKEY"...you would always use KEY, just put
EKEY (or whatever KEY-primitive) in the vector.  In fact, you have to be
in such systems to never place a primitive which, in turn, calls KEY into
the KEY vector.  That's generates a recursive overrun...
overrun...
overrun...
overrun...
<AAACH!>...eat into data stack...
overrun...
overrun...
<AARGH!>...eat into dictionary...
over..
o...
... ... ... <die>

Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM (06/08/91)

> >to do input of odd characters.  I thinking that it may be a neat
> >idea to use vectored execution, and perhaps swap between use of KEY and
> >EKEY within applications.  Or maybe that makes life even more complicated.

> Vectored execution IS the way to go.

I'm not sure I agree.  Modal behavior is troublesome, because in order to
be sure you're getting what you want at a given time, you need to know
the history of how you got there.

Also, specifying deferred execution in the standard opens up a whole can
of worms, such as how do you find out the current referent of a vector
(so you can save and restore it, for instance).

Getting the necessary "package deal" through the committee would be a
challenging task at this late date.  The committee is totally burned out,
and wants to get the process over with.

Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM