Re: [colorforth] New Linux 4word

[<maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:57:41 +0200
>From: albert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Albert van der Horst)  
>Subject: Re: [colorforth] New Linux 4word  
>To: colorforth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 05:18:56PM -0400, Mark Slicker 
wrote:
>> On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Albert van der Horst wrote:
>>
>> >Is there is a binary dump from the latest officialy 
colorforth?
>> >I would love to regenerate an assembler file, like I did 
for
>> >retroforth. We could proceed from there.
>>
>> Anyone who is the least bit informed would know 
colorForth binaries (and
>> source!) have been availble virtually from the moment of 
its release, not
>> to mention several assembler ports. That seems a bizare 
starting point
>> given what has already been acomplished.
>
>You don't read my post. The bewilderment of different 
versions of
>colorforth is what makes me ask for a "latest official 
colorforth,
>even if its a binary.".
>Nobody seems to document what version of Chuck they are 
based on,
>or what they have accomplished. People seem to work on newer
>version sent to them by Chuck and seem not to publish those
>original versions or diffs, only their own hacks.
>
>Actually, I think that very little is accomplished. There 
is still no
>colorforth that boots from virtually any PC. That is the 
most
>important accomplishment that counts in my book. Another 
mile stone
>would be an official glossary, where everybody documents her
>deviations from the glossary. Another mile stone would be a 
test
>suite. Of course some interesting programs have been 
written with
>various colorforth's. That is not the subject here.

If you can manage to get colorForth to boot from virtually 
any PC, more power to you. For the many complaints of 
colorForth not working, I have seen so few reports on what 
hardware colorForth has failed on, which version was tried, 
and exact the behavior on boot and in response to 'save'. 
Given this we might see a pattern emerge and might be able 
to diagnose the problem, and even have people who are in 
possesion of the hardware fix the problem.

As for an "official glossary", I am not sure what you mean. 
What would make it "official"? Quite early on a glossary was 
published[1], which anyone is free to contribute to.

I don't know what is meant by a "test suite", or how that 
would be a signifigant "milestone".

>
>What seems a bizarre starting point isn't. There is a 
smooth sailing
>path from a Forth defined in Forth assembler to a Forth in 
Forth.
>You may not realize that the scripting of ciasdis extracts 
names
>from binaries.
>
>Then I'm skeptical of the whole Metaforth stuff. I have 
seen so
>many terribly complicated idiosyncratic versions of them.
>I want to start from assembler, then add maybe macro's for 
headers.
>If that can be improved, fine. Probably it can't.
>
>I *do* have an Intel Pentium Forth assembler, that can be 
ported
>to colorforth. Other Forth assemblers rely heavily on 
CREATE/DOES>,
>this one doesn't.
>I need some convincing that there is more to do than port 
that
>assembler to colorforth, then define colorforth in that 
assembler.
>
>An assembler is the proper starting point. There is no 
Metacompiler
>without assembler. And an assembler may be enough.
>Unless of course you think you have a nice source if it is 
sprinkled
>with
>        cd45 2,      12 1, 3135 2,
>

What this sugests to me is that you have not seriously 
studied colorForth, or if you have, you reject its 
principles. As Chuck states clearly[2]:

"Compiler macros provide a simple, efficient way of 
exploiting the hardware of a platform. They factor and 
document machine code, yet allow its use in a natural way. 
They make porting efficient software possible."

The key word here is 'factor', if you write 13 blocks of 
code and then force these 13 blocks onto colorForth after 
the fact, clearly what you have done has nothing to do with 
the word 'factor' as Forth programmers understand it.

Mark

[1] http://kristopherjohnson.net/cgi-
bin/twiki/view/Main/ColorForthWord
[2] http://www.colorforth.com/phil.htm



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