RE: [colorforth] New Linux 4word

[Mark Slicker <maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, [iso-8859-1] Frédéric DUBOIS wrote:

> > Have just finished porting 4word to linux. Includes asm
> > source to compile
> > using NASM version 0.98.33.
> >
> > URL: http://www.modest-proposals.com/ModProg.htm
>
> If nothing else, your work is very interesting to me. I didn't install Nasm
> on my machine so I didn't build and run it, but I read the readme file and
> the source.
> It seems to me that your 4word and my 4IM are close to each other. But you
> are one step ahead of me because you get ride of the classic
> interpret/compile switch with [ and ], and use colors instead. Still, it
> isn't a CF clone cause it doesn't use huffman compression. So it seems to me
> that it's half-way between (neo-)classic Forth and CF. For this reason, I
> find 4word very educationnal: it shows a possible and understandable path
> from Forth to the CF technology. What are your future plans about 4word? Do
> you plan to introduce huffman compression?

The primary feature of colorForth source is that it is preparsed, so 
that functions of the compiler are handled by the editor. colorForth 
source distinguishes not just between interpret and compile, but also 
between numbers and text. This is not simply a matter of character set 
ASCII vs. huffman.

Another Forth I have seen (herkforth), takes the colorForth concept a step 
further and builds the dictionary at edit time. The text of a word is not 
stored in source, instead and index is stored which corresponds with a 
dictionary entry. A dictionary entry holds, among other things, the 
text of the word.

Mark

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