[ColorForth] Let's talk philosophy

[Dirk Harms-Merbitz <dirk@xxxxxxxxx>]

You may want to make your Linux sources available.

A lot of folks prefer not to use Windows/DOS.

On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 11:11:51AM -0500, Mark Slicker wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Jack Johnson wrote:
> 
> > 
> > So, to generate some traffic in this mostly quiet mailing list I thought you 
> > might be willing to share your ideas with the rest of us.  Why colorForth?  
> > What brought you here?  Not only "Where do you want to go today?" but where 
> > do you want to be tomorrow?  And how do you get there from here?
> > 
> 
> Well, I'm a Computer Science and Mathematics student, and I'm quite
> interested in free software. The internet and GNU/Linux are revolutionary
> things. Software that is collaboratively built, and collectively
> enjoyed. While the concept is very nice, I was becoming increasing
> frustrated with the implmentation. So, I wanted to build my own system.
> 
> I had heard of the lisp machines, about the interactive programming
> environment. That is what I wanted to create, a flexiable, source code
> based system, with an interactive programming environment. I had done many
> searches on the internet, however I was unable to find this, except for
> unavailable research systems, and some mention of lisp machines. I was
> previously unaware of the Forth environments, however historically they
> probably predated the lisp environments.
> 
> One day I saw mention of Chuck's site and colorForth, I was very
> excited. Not only did it fit my requirements, it had many
> interesting ideas, and it's very much beyond what I probably could have
> created myself. Creating a system requires a large breadth of experience,
> I had parts I understood very well, but not the whole. colorForth is
> truely a master's work, a very fine tool.
> 
> Not to long after I discovered Chuck's site, the first release of
> colorForth was made. Since then, I've been working exclusively with it. I
> wrote a utility to convert the assembler source to work with it in Linux
> (I don't have Windows). In practice I haven't had to modify the kernal too
> much, only some floopy disk modifications. It's still nice to have.
> 
> What I would like to see colorForth become is a highley collaberative
> environment. Currently most of us just publish code on our respective
> sites. This code needs to be self contained, where it might be the case
> some words are common or there exists common structure which can be
> factored. What would be nice is a system much like cvs, so a small group
> can work on the same colorForth and comit changes to a database, and these
> changes can filter into your own colorForth. Such a system could be much
> better than CVS. CVS is grounded in Unix, being file system based and
> reporting character based changes. A colorForth CVS can be word based,
> and understand the semantic differences between colorForths making changes
> to your colorForth accordingly.
> 
> To facilate the collaberative process, a memory alocator might be
> needed, so you don't step on someone else's memory. Otherwise there is a
> few applications which I would like. A web browser and e-mail,
> certainly. I'd like drivers for my ethernet, graphics, and mouse. However,
> I'll wait to do this, since Chuck is bringing some of these into source,
> which will make it easier to modify.
> 
> I'm probably unlike a lot of you here in that I was not very much into
> Forth before discovering colorForth. I had one class which we built a
> Forth chip in vhdl on an FPGA, however they didn't explain any of the
> philosophy which led to its design. I just assumed this was how
> modern chips were designed. Actually they never even introduced Forth or
> Chuck until it was time to program it. Forth was shown as a higher level
> language which translated into the instructions our chip 
> understood, although the instructions were Forth too.
> 
> I really do like Forth now. It's a very elegant language, and most
> importantly it's a lot of fun to program with. I get the same enjoyment
> from colorForth, as doing Mathematics, playing Chess, or playing music.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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