Re: [colorforth] Dare I say ANS!

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <kc5tja@xxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 19 January 2004 09:52 am, Roman Pavlyuk \(personal\) wrote:
> My 2c to all this discussion: I do not care about compatibility with
> FIG, F83, ANSI, whatever, because for more or less long term projects
> (we all like these, don't we? :) there's a big sense in not using any
> legacy code nor any third party components (at least, w/o thorough
> code review). So, for me it's better have all primitives documented
> rather that rely of knowing that semantics has not changed.

Absolutely agreed.

I'm becoming more and more and more fascinated with vector-based 
languages, like APL and J.  In fact, I recently learned enough of J to 
really start understanding how to use it.  With few exceptions, I 
absolutely *love* the language.  Every bit as much as I love Forth.

This is relavent to Forth because I would like to see a Forth that 
contains, if not actually based on, vector support.  It seems to me that 
much of ColorForth is built around vectors anyway: vocabularies are twin 
vectors (a search key vector containing a word's name, and a parallel 
vector containing its code field address), blocks are treated as vectors 
of words, etc.  However, these vectors are informal, and utilities to 
work on them are ad hoc.

Combining the most often used functionalities of J/APL with the reverse 
polish nature of ColorForth can produce a nice blend of environments.  
cK, a project started by Steven Apter, presents a blend between K and 
Joy.  While I think the project is worthy for its research, its actual 
execution isn't appealing to me.  It tries too hard to be K.  What I'm 
looking for is quite definitely *Forth*, but with greater support for 
vector operations.

This kind of research will inevitably yield a language that is as 
fundamentally different from ColorForth as ColorForth is to ANSI.

--
Samuel A. Falvo II


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