[ColorForth] Let's talk philosophy

[Dirk Harms-Merbitz <dirk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Additions should be source code.

Source code as a way of documenting a hardware interface or algorithm.

My goal is to reduce the cost of DIY.

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 07:02:16AM -0500, Arthur W. Green wrote:
> 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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