[ColorForth] The Forth Future

[Jeff Fox <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan Walther wrote:
> 
> I think I'm starting to understand what Jeff
> is jumping up and down about.

Well I don't think I have been jumping up and
down, but I got the impression that some people 
did seem to think that and wanted to discuss colorForth,
the real thing, not futurism.
 
> However, I am not everyone.  Does anyone else see a problem with
> that way of doing things?

That is certainly the vision I had for F21 and the one that
I brought to Chuck many years ago.  One where each node
would multitask between being a dedicated device interface
and a general computational or memory resource.  The idea
was to be able to connect them together like lego blocks
connected to any device you wanted to connect to or
programmed to perform as any device that you could
program them to perform as.  Chuck took the idea and
ran with it and picked up other support and ideas along
the way.  He has done some very clever stuff again on
the latest incarnation.  Programmable hardware and a pool
of processing and memory.

But the model I have been talking about for over a
decade is a network of devices also operating as one
device with a variable topology, not unlike the
internet but on a toy like scale.
 
> For instance, an application that prints a page may instead ship
> itself over to the printer, run itself on the printer device,
> and print the page directly...  It would all depend what was
> faster or more efficient.

Of course several F21 might produce multi-channel audio
in a format and some others ray tracing in realtime and
some others generating video etc.  In fact I wanted to be
able to support hundreds of screens and coordinated 3D
displays from a single device as it were.  The device would
be a collection of f21 nodes.  So c18 nodes are a similar
concept, but they have a fascinating programmable exterior
and built in internal networking hardware. 

> PS: I was involved with USB driver developement.  I saw the
> Microsoft header files used to make it "work right".  It is the
> most BLOATED piece of CRAP I have ever seen.  For every single
> bit of information you send over USB, you are almost guaranteed
> to send 64 unused bytes.  And thats conservative.

You don't really mean 64 bytes + overhead on each bit of data
do you?  64 + bytes per byte would be bad enough.
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