Re: [colorforth] Re-connecting

[Terry Loveall <loveall@xxxxxxxxx>]

Friends,

I love colorForth. colorForth is to C and OSs as the finest flint surgical
scalpel is to a lumber mill. One is not better than the other, they just serve
different purposes. The surgical scalpel is for a carefully controlled clean
environment and precision cutting on the millimeter scale. The lumber mill is
for converting fresh cut trees into finished building materials and lots of
sawdust and waste cuttings.

Chuck writing his OKAD is a clean environment project. The only access to the
outside world is in the output tape layout files to be sent to the foundry.
Writing robust _user_ apps is a cat of different color. 

Haven't seen any substantive comments from either Jeff or Chuck that said how
many lines of source code it took for the ITV web-browser and email client.
Bet that they were an order of magnitude larger than OKAD. And had to be. If a
user can do something, they will. Error checking routines have to be written
to cover all input and user generated algorithmic changes.

colorForth is a world view, not a specific implementation. Look at the
different releases of colorForth from Chuck. There is no sacred structure.
Chuck changed the structure to fit his changing needs. _That_ is colorForth.
Optimally fitting a minimal logic set to fill the need, using two stacks,
functions, operators and operands.

My mention of a file manager was to make the point that 'colorForth', as used
colloquially in this forum, does not normally address the end 'user'. Yes,
there are methods for managing data objects. But there is no 'user'
consideration beyond "Don't do that". 

A file manager is needed to manage files (an ordered data set) that are used
by a number of different apps and present it in a viewable structure that is
flexible enough to accomate more than one need. Optimally the 'files' need
to be accessable from outside of colorForth. And I have stupid days. Not the
days are stupid, I am. I need the file manager 'user' interface to protect me
from my self.

I went away from colorForth for over a year investigating real-world
applications. Trying to determine what is needed in an application to be
usable by computer-ignorant users. The result was a single floppy that
provided a linux OS kernel, networking and the X-window apps: text-mode web
browsing, managed email client, a graphical file manager, text editor and a
graphics engine/window manager. On the high-end of an acceptable size: one
floppy.

Now I have the information I need to take a minimal logic set, put a usable,
for me, programming interface on it and start building user, rather than
programmer, oriented apps.

Writing this response has helped me to become clearer on what colorForth is,
and isn't. And how to use it to suit my needs. Hope it helps you, also.

Thank you,
Regards,
Terry Loveall

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 21:19:42 -0500
"Roger Levy" <trip_n_save@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> set a large section of disk aside for 'data' make a table of tthousands of
> entries so you can never run out and asign each one a starting block number
> and a size. search for a space big enough and record something there, free
> the entry when it is deleted (data is still there so it can be recovered).
> that should be an adequate enough file system. every time a change is made
> you save the table out (how big should it be ... ?) you could give each one
> a 'filetype' and write countless different programs for managing them and
> filtering them in different ways. they should map to blocks and consectutive
> disk sectors to make it fast and simple. 1000x faster than windows and in
> kilobytes of code! you dont need folders or anything - do that kind of
> organization stuff in other apps and store the orginization data in a file.
> (because files don't ever move you can do this efficiently, index into it
> rather than searching.)
> 
> 5 words - name
> 1 word - type (w/ 'used' flag)
> 1 word - block/sector?
> 1 word - size
> 8 cells -> 32 bytes -> 10000 entries -> 320k
> modern hard drives can store 320k in a split second.
> back up the table to floppy now and then maybe?
> overwritten file that is bigger than the original? make a new one and mark
> the old one as freed. we have gigabytes to spare.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Slicker" <maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <colorforth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 5:25 PM
> Subject: Re: [colorforth] Re-connecting
> 
> 
> > On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Terry Loveall wrote:
> >
> > > The Explorer wannabe file manager has no cognate in colorForth so we
> will just
> > > pass on that for now. BTW Just how does one manage downloadable content,
> web
> > > pages, cache and hundreds of megabytes of email on colorForth?
> > >
> >
> > One doesn't at present. If I extrapolate my experience with colorForth, I
> > believe all Chuck's data (his chip designs, all colorForth code), fits
> > within that first megabyte of space, so there is a 1:1 correspondence
> > between the state of floppy and the first megabyte of memory. Sitting on
> > the edge of the first megabyte are the stacks and floppy buffer on the
> > interior and the dictionary space on the exterior. So actually Chuck uses
> > less than megabyte, given my experience, probably a lot less.
> >
> > I think it is a reasonable assumtion, that all essential programs can
> > fit in a relatively small finite ammount of space. Data is another story,
> > emails individually are pretty small, when you have thousands this adds up
> > to megabytes easily. And there is really no need to have every email in
> > memory, memory can be better used at present. If you don't have the data
> > in memory, that means it is on a disk or some permanent storage, and this
> > implies some method of organization, perhaps with an indexing scheme for
> > fast access.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: colorforth-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > For additional commands, e-mail: colorforth-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Main web page - http://www.colorforth.com
> >
> >
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: colorforth-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For additional commands, e-mail: colorforth-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Main web page - http://www.colorforth.com
> 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: colorforth-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: colorforth-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Main web page - http://www.colorforth.com