[ColorForth] colorForth ~popularity

["t" <loveall@xxxxxxxxx>]

My comments about colorForth is reporting social and economic dynamics, not so
much persoanl taste.

colorForth, for individual development, is unsurpassed for direct communication
with the computer. Simple, elegant and compact. However, this is the least of
the social equation that makes up software development.

The guiding factor in contemporary software is "how easy is it to use the
software for group communication?". colorForth, to date, has a unique history.

When Chuck first started talking about it and Jeff reported it on
http://ultratechnology.com/
several people took the generic description _written in HTML_ and produced
their own versions of color forth. E.g. Sean Pringle
http://www.ynet.com.au/sean/,
my color forth ruminations
http://www.users.qwest.net/~loveall/ModProg.htm,
Jeff Fox's AHA
http://ultratechnology.com/ahasrc.htm
and finally Chuck's colorForth
http://www.colorforth.com/.

As soon as Chuck released his _ASCII assembler source_, there was a flurry of
interactive development getting colorForth 1.0 and 2.0 running on as many
machines as possible. Since then, the only signs of interactive development
that I have seen is the 2.0 block listings _written in HTML_ at
http://www.merlintec.com/download/color.html,
which was posted but never talked about.

I have seen no other signs of interactive development with colorForth. My
efforts to sell it into the industry keep getting the response of "Too
specialized, We want more generic tools".

My desire is to take networked colorForth and put an ASCII interface on it.
That will facilitate group development as well as management auditable source.

On a personal taste level, I have never cared much for the typical Forth block
editors. Have always replaced them with ASCII text editors as soon as possible.
I have released the source to several linux/win32 text editors into the public
domain along with a historical perspective on program editors. See:
http://www.users.qwest.net/~loveall/Twee.htm
for a more detailed history of text editors. These text editors can be
converted to color forth use with minimal effort and will be as soon as there
is a stable target to program to.

Regards,
Terry Loveall

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dirk Harms-Merbitz" <dirk@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "ColorForth List Member" <ColorForth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 10:48 AM
Subject: [ColorForth] colorForth ~popularity


> My impression is that colorForth feels to Forth people as Forth
> felt to mainstream computer science people.
>
> The new keyboard is just as effective as the old block editor
> was in screening potential users.
>
> colorForth is a great encore. The ultimate answer to the ANSI
> standard. You have kept the same distance. I like it.
>
> On Sun, Apr 14, 2002 at 07:10:45AM -0700, Chuck Moore wrote:
> > When you say no customers will consider colorForth, what flavor of Forth
> > will they accept, if any?
> > ------------------------
> >
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