dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips) (08/17/90)
[ This message was written by Gary Smith. It is in trply to a message
I got inquiring as to what a FIGGY BAR was/is. I forwarded the
query on to Gary Smith, who provided this reply. I thought it useful
enough that I would just post it rather than email to the sender only.
-Doug ]
---Begin Forwarded Message---
Doug Philips (willet!dwp) forwarded your query regarding 'FIGGY BAR'
to me, since I usually host the Thursday ones. In the short, FIGGY
BAR(s) are open conferences for general exchange of Forth related
subjects held on the GEnie (General Electric Network for Information
Exchange, a public Information Utility in the United States) on their
Forth RoundTable (RoundTable, a GEnie term for Special Interest Group).
Since the Thursday session is a totally open and informal session, I
once described it as a food fight of Forth ideas in an article in
'Forth Dimensions'. We have discussed the standards effort in remarkable
depth, various kernels and implementations, othe languages such as Ada,
Pascal, C and Fortran, Object Oriented Forth, pre-emptive multitasking,
and many other subjects.
The only Thursday when these are not conducted is when I host an invited
guest, as I will for Bill Ragsdale August 16, Glen Haydon the following
Thursday, with Jef Raskin and Dick Miller scheduled in the following
months.
The Thursday madness or formal guest conferences occur at 9:30 pm Eastern
time (New York).
A more dignified version of the Figgy is conducted by Leonerd Morgenstern
each Sunday, with the stated intent of serving as a teaching forum for
those with specific questions about Forth.
GEnie is a commercial enterprise, so this response is not an attempt to
solicit trade via the Internet. Matter of fact, we are in the process of
establishing a server for the ForthNet, which will make transcripts from
the formal and informal gatherings available to those interested outside
the pc-board BBS's, GEnie, and nixpubs that comprise the ForthNet nodes.
Gary
---End Forwarded Message---
[ More about the ForthNet server in a message soon to follow. -Doug]
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