ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (09/16/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 1 Sat Sep 15, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 14:14 CDT To: Old Hands at FORML I had begun to consider the possibility of thinking about maybe wondering whether I might attend the upcoming FORML. How do you do it? Where do you fly in? How do you get from there to Asilomar and back to the airport? Do you need to travel back & forth between Asilomar and nearby town(s) (Pacific Grove?) or is your time pretty thoroughly occupied at Asilomar? I phoned the FIG office yesterday to try to get some info in this area and was told I should fly in to San Jose and rent a car, that Asolimar was about a 30 minute drive. My first impression to this is negative. I am reluctant to spend the money to rent a car for three days if all I use it for is a 30 minute drive Friday and a 30 minute drive Sunday, to and from the airport. Isn't there some sort of shuttle service or bus? What do you do? Any light you can shed on this would be appreciated. -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: uunet!willett!dwp or dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (09/16/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 2 Sat Sep 15, 1990 D.RUFFER [Dennis] at 19:42 EDT Re: F.SERGEANT [Frank] > I had begun to consider the possibility of thinking about maybe > wondering whether I might attend the upcoming FORML. > > How do you do it? Where do you fly in? I haven't attended for a couple of years, but I got used to the routine when I was going. It seems strange, but renting a car in San Jose and driving down ends up being almost equal to the cost and time of air fare from San Jose/San Fransisco to Monterey and is a whole lot more enjoyable. I seem to remember it takes 3 hours (with the wait between flights) to fly to Monterey and considerably less than that to drive it. Driving, you go down highway 1 (if you dare) and get to see what I consider to be the best views in this country (excluding the Applicaians in fall). That is if you have time to look as you negotiate the curves on highway 1. With the schedule at FORML, you don't get much time to use a car, but it is definitely worth taking the time after the conference to take a trip on the 17 mile drive. It is a beautiful drive around the most impressive homes in the area and through Pebble Beach golf course. Highly recommended by all who have take it. Check the price of air fare from San Jose to Monterey against the cost of renting a car for three days. I haven't checked in a couple of years, but when I last looked, there was not that much difference. See ya there. DaR ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: uunet!willett!dwp or dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/03/90)
Category 5, Topic 16
Message 10 Sun Dec 02, 1990
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 00:01 CST
What I Did Over Thanksgiving
.
I attended my first FORML. I'm very glad I did. I got to meet many of the
Forth celebrities and friends whom I knew of through telecomm, etc. and to
see other Forth friends from years ago at the L.A. Fig meetings. Those plus
others I met at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco in September
have made this a memorable and enjoyable fall.
.
Two outstanding events occurred at FORML:
1. Glen Haydon plopped an alligator onto an overhead projector.
2. Mitch Bradley sang.
.
Thank god I didn't miss either of those!
.
I'm not ever leaving home again or I'd plan on attending every future FORML.
If I do attend again, I hope I'll remember to arrive thoroughly rested.
Unfortunately I was tired to begin with because of some pre-FORML visiting I
did in L.A. After we were thrown out of the conference room around midnight
each night we adjourned to someone's room where the party continued. I don't
know how late, as I tried to get to bed by 2 am and I wasn't the last to
leave.
.
If I agreed with anyone about anything, I'm sorry: it was an oversight and
I'll try to correct it in the future. Here is a sample of my disagreements:
1. The size and direction of F-PC. We've already got Turbo Pascal and
Turbo C.
2. That there is any sort of standards effort going on at all. It seems
to me that X3J14 is really an alternate Forth Modification Laboratory where
they don't have quite as much fun as we did at Asilomar.
3. That a senior Forth Inc person thinks Forth is NOT the computer
programming language to teach his child. I fear this is merely the tip of an
iceberg.
4. I think it is absurd to distribute eforth as a MASM listing. One of
the assumptions made is that recipients will already have a PC/XT/AT
available. Do I need to connect the dots? Richard Haskell's paper on his
trials in implementing eforth for the 68000 using the MASM approach makes a
strong case for meta-compilation! The old hex assembly listing had its place
when you distributed only a PAPER version. But, when you insist the
recipient have a PC anyway, and you are going to supply him with a disk
anyway, there is no sense in giving him a MASM listing instead of a Forth
listing and meta-compiler. (Of course, I hope no one will agree with me.)
-- Frank
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Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwpForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/03/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 11 Sun Dec 02, 1990 B.RODRIGUEZ2 [Brad] at 10:56 EST Gee, sorry, Frank, but I think I agree with all of your points 1-4. Mostly agree, anyway. 1. We _do_ need some tools with the "polish" of Turbo Pascal/C. It's embarassing to show a client the typical Forth metacompiler. Granted, good tools does not mean "fat" Forth. 2. I bestow upon you my recent enlightment: X3J14 isn't here to standardize the language, they're here to _improve_ it. I was given a copy of the ANS guidelines for X3 efforts, and damned if that isn't what ANS X3 is slanted towards. 3. Hmmm. I'll have to think about this. 4. Agreed. I've recently implemented a kernel in assembly language, and it _is_ a trial. But show me a metacompiler that someone besides the author can use. (No offense, I haven't seen your metacompiler yet.) Tools again. Sorry I missed FORML this year. Do you plan to attend Rochester? - Brad ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) (12/03/90)
> Two outstanding events occurred at FORML: > 1. Glen Haydon plopped an alligator onto an overhead projector. Actually, as I recall, it was Leonard Morgenstern that used the alligator (it was a pun on "allocator"). > 2. Mitch Bradley sang. If you can call it that. > If I do attend again, I hope I'll remember to arrive thoroughly rested. > ... > each night we adjourned to someone's room where the party continued. > I don't know how late, as I tried to get to bed by 2 am and I wasn't the > last to leave. I used to do that, but I finally realized that I consistently got ill from lack of rest after returning home from FORML. It is possible to bail out of the party and go to bed around midnight; the down side is that you don't get to experience 20 or 30 people crammed into one hotel room. > 1. The size and direction of F-PC. We've already got Turbo Pascal and > Turbo C. To each his own. Nobody forces anybody to use F-PC. > 3. That a senior Forth Inc person thinks Forth is NOT the computer > programming language to teach his child. I believe he said that Forth is not the *first* language he would teach his child. I can see his point; to use Forth, there is a fair amount of nitty-gritty that you have to learn. I think Logo is a better choice for a first language. Forth was not designed for teachability, but instead for useability for real-world engineering problems, and it shows. Forth is full of tedious-to-explain kludges that turn out to be reasonable tradeoffs under certain sets of non-obvious constraints. A child would not be expected to care about speed or space efficiency or many of the other things that recommend Forth over other "cleaner" interactive languages. > 4. I think it is absurd to distribute eforth as a MASM listing. One of > the assumptions made is that recipients will already have a PC/XT/AT > available. Hear, hear. Does it bother anybody besides me that, with eForth distributed in MASM, Bill Gates stands to make money on Forth too, and worse yet, on Forth used on non-80x86 processors? A much better approach, in my entirely selfish opinion, would be to write it in retargetable metacompiler form (it goes without saying that my metacompiler is retargetable), with the metacompiler running on top of my C Forth 83 (which has been trivially ported to dozens of machines from PCs to all flavors of Unix machines to VAXen to mainframes). I would venture to guess that there are more people who know C than who know MASM. Besides which, C Forth 83, at $50, is cheaper than MASM (Microsoft doesn't sell anything for less than $50, do they?). End self-serving-but-reasonably- cogent argument. > (Of course, I hope no one will agree with me.) Is it okay to agree with some few of your points? If not, I apologize. Cheers, Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/04/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 12 Sun Dec 02, 1990 D.RUFFER [Dennis] at 23:50 EST Ah, Frank it looks like you survived the ordeal. Congratulations! Was Glen's alligator alive? Mitch knows how to sing? Will amazements never sease? You are right thought, FORML is certainly a whole lot more fun that the X3J14 meetings. <grin> I hope it wasn't our little outing that wore you out while you were down here in LALA land. Sorry about the misdirections, but I thouroughly enjoyed the dinner and hope you weren't too dissapointed with the food. :-) How many FORTH, Inc. people did you meet? The one's with kids brings the list even smaller. Did I say I wasn't going to teach Ben (age 11) Forth? How many drinks did I have before you got there? Of course he will know Forth, just as soon as he figures out that computers are for more than just playing games or writting his homework on. Spelling is also something that is almost a requirement. Soon, but he is more interested in building his R/C plane right now. So, it musta been the other one, and if we are talking about the same person, he doesn't like beginner's code. It would be hard to imagine how he would handle teaching programming to a child. I'm sure it will become a wonderful learning experience for all of them when the time comes. I'll wait and see. #'s 1 & 2 I agree! I kind of like the MASM format, and with things like Windows and OS/2 that format is about the simplest way in. An alternative would be to have a meta compiler output the Microsoft OBJ format, but at the very least, you will have to LINK the program before it is going to be of much use. Has anyone out there solved the OBJ format details yet? DaR ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/06/90)
Date: 12-03-90 (12:56) Number: 367 of 368 (Echo)
To: DENNIS RUFFER Refer#: 350
From: RAY DUNCAN Read: NO
Subj: 1990 FORML Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+)
>has anyone out there solved the OBJ format details yet
Ah, Dennis, you're severely behind the times. LMI has been generating
OBJ files directly from high level Forth code for years. This is
exactly how we build our UR/FORTH systems for MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows,
etc. -- we compile Forth high level code to standard OBJ files then run
them through the system linker to produce an executable.
NET/Mail : LMI Forth Board, Los Angeles, CA (213) 306-3530
<<<>>>
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Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwpForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/07/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 15 Thu Dec 06, 1990 D.RUFFER [Dennis] at 00:48 EST Re: RAY DUNCAN > Ah, Dennis, you're severely behind the times. LMI has been > generating OBJ files directly from high level Forth code for > years. I knew that Ray, but forgot (for a moment) that you had solved it years ago. Can/Will you share your discoveries? Is there a good reference to the various record formats? Have you already written about it somewhere that I have missed? I'm convinced that the path you choose is going to end up to be the ONLY way, so I've got a little catching up to do. So, I'm a little late. :-) DaR ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/07/90)
Date: 12-03-90 (17:53) Number: 370 of 380 To: FRANK SERGEANT Refer#: 340 From: CHRIS WATERS Read: NO Subj: 1990 Forml Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+) FS. I attended my first FORML. I'm very glad I did. Asilomar is beautiful, isn't it? I haven't been to ForML in several years, but I'll have to scrape together the cash again one of these days soon. FS. 2. Mitch Bradley sang. On the other hand.......... ;-) As for your arguments, I'll bite! I love to argue. Unfortunately, I can't find much to disagree with in what you said. But I'll try. FS. 1. The size and direction of F-PC. We've already got Turbo FS.Pascal and Turbo C. So? Why shouldn't we have a Turbo-Forth out there? Personally, if forced to use a Turbo-language, I'd rather it be Forth than much of anything else. Granted *I* wouldn't use this system for any real development work, but it seems like a good thing for the novice. FS. 2. That there is any sort of standards effort going on at all. Of course not! That would be contrary to the very nature of Forth!<g> Seriously, though, while I'm sure the guys 'n' gals on the ANSI committee are doing their best, they're up against the fact that Forth is such a simple language, and so easy to modify, that it's almost impossible to resist the urge to go in and tweak the kernel slightly to optimize it for each application. I know I've never been able to resist this urge. FS. 4. I think it is absurd to distribute eforth as a MASM FS.listing. I can't argue with this one at all. Sorry. <grin> --- MM2.1a *Specializing in General Tomfoolery (& UNIX when convenient) --- * SFUTI 3.01 / Now accepting UNIX files! PCRelay:THECAVE -> #559 RelayNet (tm) 4.10 The Cave (408)259-8098 12/24/96/19.2 HST/DS <<<>>> ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/08/90)
Date: 12-04-90 (16:27) Number: 383 of 394 To: RAY DUNCAN Refer#: 356 From: CHRIS WATERS Read: NO Subj: 1990 Forml Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+) RD. >a senior Forth Inc person thinks Forth is not the language to RD. >teach his child... RD. RD.I don't know who that person is, but I absolutely agree with RD.him/her. Now now, Forth may not be the ideal first language--I doubt if anyone will seriously argue with that--but it's a better choice than some other languages that are often taught as a first language. (I'm thinking, of course, of that one that starts with "B"). ;-) And I do know a couple of people who learned Forth as their first language. None of them seemed seriously crippled by it. I understand what you're saying about the public perception of Forth programmers, but the fact remains that Forth is a fairly simple language, it's interactive, and I'd rate it a _little_ bit higher than LISP (and a lot higher than APL) as a choice for first language. --- MM2.1a *Misspelled and stolen tagline alert! --- * SFUTI 3.01 / Now accepting UNIX files! PCRelay:THECAVE -> #559 RelayNet (tm) 4.10 The Cave (408)259-8098 12/24/96/19.2 HST/DS <<<>>> ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/09/90)
Date: 12-06-90 (13:09) Number: 395 of 397 (Echo)
To: CHRIS WATERS Refer#: 383
From: RAY DUNCAN Read: NO
Subj: 1990 FORML Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+)
There's no doubt that Forth's interactivity and simplicity are pluses,
looking at it as a first language.
It also has features that are strong MINUSES when you're trying to teach
good programming technique and provide a forgiving environment for a
novice:
lack of strong data typing
lack of any effective runtime error checking
the ability to crash the machine hopelessly with perfectly innocent
experiments e.g. 0 1000 ERASE
1234. FOO 2! (where FOO was a simple variable)
0 EXECUTE
and so on. The very things that make Forth so powerful for a programmer
who already knows structured techniques and safe design practices make
the language unsuitable for a person with NO understanding of machine
architecture and NO background in structured, modular programming.
NET/Mail : LMI Forth Board, Los Angeles, CA (213) 306-3530
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Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwpForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/09/90)
Date: 12-06-90 (13:12) Number: 396 of 397 (Echo) To: DENNIS RUFFER Refer#: 389 From: RAY DUNCAN Read: NO Subj: 1990 FORML Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+) The best reference (although it is not complete because of new obj record formats that arrived with MSC 5.1 and MSC 6.0) is Rick Wilton's article in the MS-DOS Encyclopedia on OBJ formats. Rick wrote the original version of our object module compiler and used that experience to write the encyclopedia article. Needless to say generating Intel/Microsoft OMF from Forth source code is a tremendously messy job, not because the compilation of the Forth is so hard, but because the OBJ module structure is so arcane, with many different record types and all kinds of strange cross-references between them. NET/Mail : LMI Forth Board, Los Angeles, CA (213) 306-3530 <<<>>> ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/10/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 20 Sun Dec 09, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 14:52 CST BR>Sorry I missed FORML this year. Do you plan to attend Rochester? . Thanks, Brad. It's good to hear a friendly voice now and then. Just when I was almost reconciled to my fate it appears that you don't completely disagree with me and that even Mitch doesn't completely disagree with me, at least regarding meta-compilation vs assembly. Now there is nothing at all I can count on. . No, I do not plan to attend Rochester. On the other hand I do not definitely plan not to attend either. Attending seems to conflict with two of my goals: never to leave home again and not to spend any money. On the other hand, I so enjoyed FORML that I'd love to attend both FORML and Rochester every year. I just have not worked this out yet. . My 4 points were meant as quick samples of my disagreements. Maybe I can't explain my position other than as a vague feeling of unease. Maybe I should call them "dislikes" instead of "disagreements." Take for example my daring to say I disagreed with a senior Forth Inc person preferring a language other than Forth for his child. Ray Duncan in particular seemed to disagree with me over this, but I think he missed my point. Now, really, I don't give a damn what language he teaches his child. I never intended to say that no decent human being in the world could consider teaching his child BASIC or Trilogy or COBOL. But, I do think it is a sign (Give us a sign, o lord, give us a sign. Houston: 156 miles.), no matter how unimportant in itself; and not a good sign, either. Take a rather extreme example. Even though I can think of many better things to teach a child, I would still think it disharmonious to hear the local Roman Catholic priest had chosen a religion other than Christianity to teach his own children. I hope people can get my point here without taking too much offense. If the local doctor prescribed Tylenol to all his patients but was careful to see his own family never used it, wouldn't you think something was wrong somewhere? Yes, yes, my analogies are not exactly applicable. I hope you see what I mean about this feeling of unease. It has nothing to do with how to introduce programming to a child! . You have a point about the difficulty of following (some) meta-compilers. (Brad, You can see mine whever you wish by either downloading PYGMY13.ZIP or by E-mailing your mailing address to me). I think mine (which perhaps should be called Charles Moore's from cmFORTH) is much easier to use and understand than F83's. Pygmy is not made to be easy to port to other processors, but to be fast and convenient on a PC. Eforth is slow, but that is the trade off for getting it up quickly (I agree with this trade off. Speed it up at your leisure, but at least you're now in Forth. On the other hand, speed is everything at times.) . The idea of eforth is to have as few machine language primitives as possible, within reason. These could be isolated fairly easily - in any metacompiler, probably - with instructions to the porter to put in his own hex codes for those primitives "we don't care where you get 'em" in the marked places, then type 1 LOAD. The meta-compiler then generates a new kernel and saves a binary (or Intel hex or Motorola S1-S9) image to the PC's disk. No matter what we do, as Mitch points out, the user has to figure a way to download the image to his target system. There would be a small, clearly marked area for setting CONSTANTS for byte order, alignment, etc. . I say the porter does not get to claim complete ignorance of the target processor's assembly language, but that he needs to learn almost nothing of a metacompiler and absolutely nothing about MASM, to port eforth to a new processor. It only takes one porter per processor. Thereafter anyone who wants just to use eforth can download that version from GEnie. Remember, part of the eforth plan is to require the porter to have a PC and to send him a disk (or file via modem). There is no need to require he also have MASM, everything he needs can be included (in Forth) on the disk he's being sent anyway. As I've said before, if anyone wants to see whether the source code for Forth is more readable in Forth or in MASM, just download eforth and compare them (both versions are included). . So, in conclusion, I'd just like to say there is room for many different viewpoints and opinions and approaches on all of these and many other subjects. One of the joys of attending FORML was hearing so many of them and seeing how misguided or insightful others can be, and I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't offer that same opportunity to others. . -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/10/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 21 Sun Dec 09, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 14:53 CST Dennis, Yes, I survived and enjoyed it. No, driving all over southern California looking for you only accounts for a small part of my fatigue, and the food and conversation were well worth it. . The alligator was not alive but I think it was not dead either. I believe it was a rubber toy. Was it really Len and not Glen? I could have sworn ... It was indeed a pun on "allocator" and I laughed so hard I guess I couldn't remember who did it. Yes, Mitch's singing was very good. Of course, if I couldn't tell Len from Glen, maybe I have Mitch confused with Pavarotti. . Regarding the "first language" issue, I'm beginning to regret opening my big mouth. Probably you and I ARE thinking of the same person. I don't even say he is wrong in any way. I omitted a name, as I am not criticizing his decision or opinion. I went into this in more detail in a previous message. I'm just saying I've gotta feeling. And, my feeling's that it's a sign. And that it ain't a good sign. . However, many people have been responding to the entirely different question of whether Forth is the best 1st language (perhaps for a child). Do they seriously mean a beginning programmer (child or not) should NOT be allowed to crash the system from the start? (And learn it isn't the end of the world.) As an aside, "save early and often" is better learned early, with relatively unimportant work, I think. And, teaching one's own child anything intentionally is a brave undertaking. One of my favorite jokes - I don't understand why it has made people so angry with me - is to teach them how to change bases, using HEX DECIMAL OCTAL, etc and then ask them to tell me what base they are in by typing BASE ? Of course they get the answer "10" regardless of the base, and it is perfectly correct. This tickles me to no end, but my "victims" don't seem to think it is funny at all. Oh well. Regardless of the 1st language for a child, I am probably not the 1st choice as his teacher! . Regarding your preference for the MASM format, remember we are talking about generating a new kernel for a new processor rather than generating something to run on a PC. And really, you should have heard what Richard Haskell went through porting eforth to a 68000 using MASM. I forget the details, but they even included writing a special program in F-PC to fix something or other. The point I got was that it was not straight forward and it was not easy. But, be my guest. Anyone who wishes to do it the MASM way has my full permission. If and when it becomes appropriate I'll be glad to say I told you so. Note I am not discussing how a master Forth gen'r should gen his own Forth, just expressing my opinion that "eforth's" OWN goals are ill served by the MASM approach. I'm just trying to help by criticizing anything that moves. . Furthermore, I think Mitch has a VERY interesting point when he says . MB>Does it bother anybody besides me that, with eForth distributed in MB>MASM, Bill Gates stands to make money on Forth too, and worse yet, MB>on Forth used on non-80x86 processors? . -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/10/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 22 Sun Dec 09, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 14:53 CST Mitch, it is a rare treat when you do agree with me and usually it is instructive when you disagree. . MB>To each his own. Nobody forces anybody to use F-PC. . I agree completely. Without it existing I wouldn't be able to disagree with its direction. I'm quite content to allow others to use it as they please. I could even see myself using it, fairly happily, under certain circumstances. . I am happier with the idea of bringing up a Forth quickly by using your C Forth 83 approach than I am with the MASM approach. I'm sure this disclaimer is not needed, but almost everything I've been posting lately has a lot to do with emotion and what I (perhaps unexplainably) like or dislike rather than with cold, hard logic. (Although I do think I have logic on my side regarding eforth & MASM.) I don't like MASM! I will not use MASM. (Yes I will. I'll program in ANYTHING if the price is right.) If I were to use a non-Forth 80x86 assembler I would almost certainly use the shareware A86 - which is great. Better, simpler, faster, and also fully compatible than MASM (so I believe). It's probably available in the IBM roundtable for downloading - and Bill Gates won't get a dime. . I have been under the impression that to put Forth on a new machine using your C approach requires that one have a C compiler available on that machine. Am I in error on this point? If the C compiler is required it would still seem to leave a place for something like eforth on various systems. . I'm glad to have met you at FORML and to have heard your fine singing. . -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/10/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 23 Sun Dec 09, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 14:54 CST CW> So? Why shouldn't we have a Turbo-Forth out there? Personally, CW> if forced to use a Turbo-language, I'd rather it be Forth than CW> much of anything else. Granted *I* wouldn't use this system for CW> any real development work, but it seems like a good thing for the CW> novice. . I feel in general we are richer when there are more rather than fewer alternatives. No one thing needs to be right for every person or every purpose. . Yes, Asilomar was pretty. I hope to meet you there if I make it to another FORML. . -- Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/11/90)
Category 5, Topic 16 Message 24 Sun Dec 09, 1990 D.RUFFER [Dennis] at 23:10 EST Re: RAY DUNCAN > The best reference (although it is not complete because of new obj > record formats that arrived with MSC 5.1 and MSC 6.0) is Rick > Wilton's article in the MS-DOS Encyclopedia on OBJ formats. Rick > wrote the original version of our object module compiler and used > that experience to write the encyclopedia article. I thought you might tell me that I already had the best reference around <grin>. We have a couple copies of the Encyclopedia at work. I just haven't even tried to read through the entire thing yet. I was also afraid that it might be incomplete, and I am mostly interested in the Windows 3.0 type stuff. I supposed I'm just going to have to figure it out for myself. Thank you very much for at least getting me started. Now, to just get off my duff and do the rest of my job. Thanks! DaR ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/15/90)
Date: 12-11-90 (15:05) Number: 504 of 514 To: CHRIS WATERS Refer#: 383 From: ANIL RODRIX Read: NO Subj: 1990 FORML Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Conf: FORTH (58) Read Type: GENERAL (+) I agree Forth should not be that difficult. If not the first then the second, but not after basic. My kids were first introduced to LOGO in KG, and it seems after LOGO, Forth would be easier to pickup than Basic. PCRelay:PROPC -> #288 RelayNet (tm) 4.10 Pittsburgh ProPC BBS (412) 321-6645 <<<>>> ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us or uunet!willett!dwp