[ColorForth] Let's talk philosophy

["Arthur W. Green" <goshawk@xxxxxxx>]

Dirk Harms-Merbitz wrote:
> 
> How about we stop talking about accelerating something 1000x by cheating
> and focus on increasing the usefullness of colorforth? Make it work
> on more systems, finish network support, add a QWERTY version, add 3D
> graphics support, add demos...

Maybe it is just me, but I get the distinct feeling that adding all of these
things to colorForth without making a stripped down "core" version available
without all of these features available sort of contradicts the design
philosophy of colorForth.

Continuing along these lines, I think colorForth's "usefulness" is a very
subjective and quite exclusive thing that varies from user to user. Likewise, I
am afraid I must say that once I have a version of colorForth working on the one
machine I intend to have it run on, all of the features you list above would not
be particularly useful to me. Not even to extend it to work on more systems
using my hardware, as I am interested in optimal performance (if possible) on my
own system only. Not to sound entirely selfish, but I do own a *personal*
computer, don't I?

(Ok ok, the QWERTY keyboard support *would* be particularly useful to me because
of my messy typing style... which I am not particularly proud of.)

This is not meant as a criticism to you, directly or indirectly, but more of a
general reflection of my feelings on colorForth as a bit of a customized
solution ("roll-your-own" or have someone do it for you...) for a dedicated
computer handling a specific problem.

Your reasoning is quite good for trying to initiate more users into colorForth
who not otherwise try it without some kind of support. I'll be honest that my
first thoughts were to scramble about and find a way to get some hard disk
support and PCI bus access going for colorForth, but this is back to where the
"personal" issue comes into play. As a result, my assumption will be that I want
is probably not what others would want, for better or worse.

However, it is my hope that these very same users one could attract with these
new "doodads", should they decide to stay with colorForth and realizing some of
its unique attributes, would be more interested in building it up from scratch
for their particular application. I think this is where it shines...

I will state outright that I have quite a ways to go before I can put what I
want into colorForth completely on my own, but I personally would not have
colorForth any other way if it were completely up to me (which it isn't).  I
will probably be using colorForth (or a similar spin-off I threw together myself
for another computer) for a bit after Mr. Moore is no longer interested in doing
anything with it. I really have been pining for a solution like colorForth for
awhile [and not completely realizing it up until I came across it], and I am
very very optimistic about the results I should be able to obtain from it once I
am up to speed.

I guess I could have been short and brief by simply stating that I hope more
people looking for "conventional operating system" functionality in colorForth
should still be mindful of users like myself who are not interested in seeing
colorForth evolve into a do-all "swiss-army knife" kind of thing, as surely any
of us could use the host of existing solutions for that kind of thing. Yes, I
could have made this nice and concise, but hell, that might have been a smart
thing to do. (It seems even I am over my own head...)

Best regards,
-- Art

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