ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (02/19/90)
Category 1, Topic 12 Message 79 Sat Feb 17, 1990 F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 18:21 CST NOT EXACTLY 3 KEYS Using SuperKey, I have begun using a modified version of the Dvorak-Dealey "Simplified" keyboard (suggested by Roedy Green). This is my third day. My computer boots with it automatically, so I have given up QWERTY altogether. I planned to try it without any committment, but I think I like it. I am a fast touch typist on a QWERTY keyboard and I am certainly not back up to normal speed yet. Roedy suggested that you might reduce fatigue as well as increase speed. I guess I'll find out. I found a book in the library: TYPEWRITING BEHAVIOR by August Dvorak et al copyright 1936. I can't read it. It goes into tedious detail after tedious detail on the subjects of typing, teaching typing, coping with the mechanics of the typewriters of their day, etc. I wanted the book mainly to see what layout Dvorak recommended (as opposed to what others say his layout is). Maybe I'll get a copy of their patent one day: "Simplified Keyboard Arrangement," U.S. Patent Office, Serial No. 612,738, 1932. Anyway, my layout is the same as theirs for the letters and some of the punctuation. The numbers and some of the punctuation are different. They recommend 7 5 3 1 9 0 2 4 6 8 but I'm still using 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. Maybe I'll switch the numbers later. Right now I find their familiarity a comfort. I haven't switched key caps, so I'm REALLY doing it by touch. I still want to go to a 3 key keyboard, so this interim step may be wasted. Meanwhile I'm noticing and enjoying staying mostly in home position (which you can't really do with QWERTY) and noticing and disliking the terrible jump to and from the Enter key and to and from the cursor pad. Maybe I'll remap another key to Enter and start using more of the Word Star control key approach to cursoring. It sure would be nice not to have no leave home position ever. - Frank ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (03/06/90)
Category 1, Topic 12
Message 80 Sun Mar 04, 1990
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 21:50 CST
Rob Chapman (via Usenet) suggests that u FOR ... NEXT should execute u
times.
Rob, thanks for your suggestion and thanks for posting your source code for
BOTFORTH. (Where did the name come from?)
: STARS ( u -) FOR STAR NEXT ;
In Pygmy and in cmFORTH and presumably in ANS, u STARS would do STAR
u+1 times. 0 STARS would do STAR 1 time. -1 STARS would do STAR a whole
lotta times. If you want it done u times you need to do something like :
STARS ( u -) ?DUP IF 1- FOR STAR NEXT THEN ;
I have about decided that I agree with Rob. In looking over several
applications it seems that much of the time when I used FOR NEXT I preceded
it with 1- or surrounded it with ?DUP IF 1- .... THEN. So, I think I'm
going to change over to Rob's method.
cmFORTH has the word -ZERO that accomplishes this change to u instead of
u+1. It is used like this
: STARS ( u -) FOR -ZERO STAR THEN NEXT ;
when I first looked at it, it didn't make sense to me that -ZERO was laying
down an unconditional branch. I thought it should be testing for zero. Now
I understand. It lays down an unconditional jump to the end of the loop,
using up the 1st of the u+1 passes without doing the body of the loop. If u
is zero, then the body of the loop is not executed at all. At compile time, -
ZERO increments the address left by FOR so that NEXT will compile a branch
back to STAR and not back to the unconditional branch laid down by -ZERO.
Rather than use -ZERO, I think I will build it in as the default.
The first cost I see is that each occurrence of FOR will take up 6 bytes (in
Pygmy: PUSH BRANCH <address> rather than just 2 bytes for PUSH. We could
define another primitive that would combine the PUSH and branch and would
only take up 4 bytes instead of 6. Thus our cost in space is either 2 or 4
bytes. We will make up for this by the many times we can eliminate the 8
bytes for ?DUP 1- IF ... THEN. The other cost is the time to do the
branch in those cases where we do not need to prevent the body of the loop
from executing for an index of zero. We will also gain in source code
clarity.
Anyone have any thoughts on why we shouldn't make this change?
-- Frank
-----
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Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (04/13/90)
Date: 04-10-90 (09:08) Number: 3110 (Echo) To: GARY SMITH Refer#: 3104 From: JACK BROWN Read: NO Subj: CHUCK MOORE AND FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE > A well-written program does not need comments. Alternately, > comments are a crutch to make inteligible a poorly organized > program. > Well.... If Chuck Moore is right I guess poor old Donald Knuth wasted 3-4 years of his life trying to turn TEX into a model literate program. See the March 1990 issue of the ACM Journal...(towards the back) for a report on the state of literate programming. Literate programming is at the extreme opposite end of the scale from Chuck's postion. Programs should not only contain comments they should be typeset in beautiful fonts with complete explanations of the algorithms embedded in the text. Ideally you have a literate programming environment that allows you to develop both your code and prose simultaneously. NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (04/13/90)
Date: 04-11-90 (22:34) Number: 3111 (Echo) To: JACK BROWN Refer#: 3110 From: JERRY SHIFRIN Read: NO Subj: CHUCK MOORE AND FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE JB>Literate programming is at the extreme opposite end of the scale from JB>Chuck's postion. Programs should not only contain comments they shou JB>be typeset in beautiful fonts with complete explanations of the While I think Chuck tends towards the extreme in terms of cryptic coding, I'm afraid I don't see great virtue in the other extreme. I remember when I was first getting started in programming and these guys would show me how they took great pains to line up all their variable names, commas, etc. They put greater energy into the appearance of the code than they did into its functionality. At the time I thought that was decadent and I've seen no reason to change my opinion. I beieve that there is reason to be concerned with form, but not more so than substance. --- ~ EZ 1.26 ~ ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (08/13/90)
Category 1, Topic 12
Message 69 Sat Aug 11, 1990
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 17:31 CDT
To Phil Koopman, re 3-key keyboard & CM
An ongoing interest of mine, as well. All the details would be
appreciated. For example, did you see him entering text - as one might into
a word processor? That is, typing away, character by character? How fast
was it? I gather he was picking out letters, for example one of seven picks
the group, e.g. LETTERS NUMBERS PUNCTUATION TOGGLES etc, then under LETTERS
might be
ABCDEFG HIJKMNO PQRSTUV XYZ.,?Space
Capitalize-Previous-Letter BS UP etc. Then under
ABCDEFG might be A B C D E F G. The more details from you & others,
the better.
With the system above, it would seem that each any char would take about
5 strokes max, with 2 being the most common. For example. Once you select
LETTERS, you then choose the group and then the single letter and are
automatically returned to the LETTERS menu, so as long as you are just typing
letters, it is two strokes. When you need something else, you pick UP to get
out of the LETTERS menu.
As I type now, I'm often using only a single keystroke per letter.
However, it takes both hands and there is the slow down from reaching away
from home position. Even reaching for the shift key is a bit jarring, from
the stand point of staying in home position, and the Enter key, allllll the
way over there is almost intolerable (if I could stand the smiley faces I
might consider putting one here). All concept of "home" disappears when I
shift over to function keys or to the cursor pad.
I consider it possible, but not proved, that the 3 key keyboard's
promise of NEVER EVER having to leave HOME might pay for the doubling,
trebling, whatever of strokes. Plus it would free up an extra arm and hand
and most of your body (your posture is greatly affected by having to get BOTH
hands on the keyboard). We might begin to "hear" our text as we drum out
passages. Additional benefits would be portability (to go with a battery
powered RTX computer) and, if you didn't display the menus, system security!
Anyway, thanks for the details you've mentioned so far.
-- Frank
-----
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Report problems to: uunet!willett!dwp or dwp@willett.pgh.pa.usrvn@forth.mlb.semi.harris.com (Rick VanNorman) (08/15/90)
In regard to the current controversy about Chuck Moore's 3-key input device (crippled mouse? 8^)), I have watched him move from a normal terminal connected to a (I think) PDP-11 (about 1985); to a seven switch, one hand keyboard connected to a single-board Novix computer (the Fk2, Fk3) (from 1986-1987) where the seven switches were the exact ascii representation of the character to be input; to a 3-key input device connected to the same Novix computer; to a 3-key input device connected to the ShBoom computer (shown this year at the Rochester Forth Conference). The way that Chuck uses the 3-key device is: pick one of seven actions from a (currently) invisible (used to be visible) menu. These seven choices represent six things to be done at the current level and one option to return to a higher level in the structure. In the current (ShBoom) system, textual data is not represented by ascii but by an arbitrary coded representation that was convenient for Chuck (as I recall, the numbers and letters are contiguous, and the special symbols followed them). The entry of text and programs is done via a memory dump editor. To insert a character, one uses the cursor motion modes to select the position in memory, then switch modes to "byte edit", then scroll up/down the current character until the desired character appears. This seems very cumbersome, but to watch Chuck in action belies some of the confusion. I don't think I could ever use an input device like that, but Chuck has a track record of innovations that border on genius 8^). I hope this clears up some of the confusion, or at least adds to the confusion. Cheerio, Rick VanNorman Harris Semiconductor Standard Disclaimers (the only standard I believe in!)
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (08/20/90)
Category 1, Topic 12
Message 70 Sun Aug 19, 1990
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 13:26 CDT
MB>One wonders how a color-blind person would fare with such a device?
Mitch, thanks for the info about the 3-key keybd. And, not just the
color-blind, but the monochrome monitor users as well! I think the color-
blind cope with traffic lights by their positions and they might handle CM's
menus the same way. Same for monochrome monitor users, perhaps, or maybe by
numbering the choices.
-- Frank
-----
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Report problems to: uunet!willett!dwp or dwp@willett.pgh.pa.usForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (08/20/90)
Category 1, Topic 12
Message 71 Sun Aug 19, 1990
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 13:26 CDT
Rick, thanks for the extra info on how CM uses the 3 key keyboard. That
really helps. I'd love to see him in action with it some day. It's "cute"
but is it "better" is still unanswered in my mind. When I get around to it,
I'll try it out.
Meanwhile, I am doing something that is vaguely related: I'm typing on
a Dvorak keyboard layout. (Well, it is not classic Dvorak, especially in
that I've left the numbers where they would be on QWERTY). This has been a
very interesting experiment. I think it is a better layout. What is not
clear is whether it is enough better to pay for (a) the re-learning and (b)
the loss of facility on QWERTY. Probably not! Also, I have failed to take
the final step of eliminating all "far" motion (such as reaching for the
Enter, Home, End, Esc, arrow, & function keys). I'm going to do that too,
one of these days.
I'd be interested in how CM's Sh-boom relates to Harris & the RTX. Is
it a uP that Harris will add to its line? Do they serve different niches,
etc? Naturally, I am extremely happy with Harris! Their discernment and
judgement is beyond compare.
-- Frank
-----
This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process.
Report problems to: uunet!willett!dwp or dwp@willett.pgh.pa.usrvn@forth.mlb.semi.harris.com (Rick VanNorman) (08/22/90)
Frank, Glad to be of help. RE ShBoom -- Harris does not currently have any plans regarding Chuck's newest chip. We can't afford to spread ourselves too thin, lest we loose focus on the RTX product. In the future, who knows? Thanks for the nice words, but you are prejudiced!!!!! Cheerio, Rick VanNorman Harris Semiconductor Standard Disclaimers (the only standard I believe in!)