Re: [colorforth] Question about displaying text

[John Drake <jmdrake_98@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Nick Maroudas <alice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Nice work, John & Jeff.  I've sampled both and
> learnt as well as enjoyed the clean yet colourful
> layout.  Comments:  

Thanks!
 
> 1. Maybe < erase > ought to be mentioned among the
> editor instructions, for erasing whole blocks before
> edit.  Chuck wrote in his User Guide: 
> 
> "< 63 99 erase > will zero blocks 63-161. This
> readies them for Editor" 
> 
>    Thus < 22 2 erase > would clear block 22 and its
> shadow block 23

Good point.  I'll look into that. 

> 2.  After doing the "Get you started" exercise, I
> posted something on the blog there: font can be
> redesigned using Chuck's ikon editor, block 34; plus
> hints how to do it. Since then I found that Howerd
> Oakford's CF for DOS (see Howerd's website) has
> added something to Chuck's ikon keyboard that makes
> it even easier: a little yellow < t > to toggle the
> pixels.
> Howerd's CF also has more characters available for <
> emit >.  
> 
>     Are these the sort of simple, hands-on comments
> that you are looking for on this project?   
> 

After reading your comment about this on the blog
I added a link to Chuck's charecter map.  That
page has the information you mentioned about 
"icon".  I suppose I could include that inline
on that page, but I don't know if that would
be distracting from the task at hand.  Certainly
all of the built in apps need to be documented.
I was thinking about putting that in an appendix.
Or maybe a prologue?  So many decisions. :)

Howard's version of icon sounds like a definite
improvement!

And yes.  These are good comments.
> 
> 3.  John also wrote:  "... there HAS to be a better
> way. How canI get 
> ColorForth to differentiate between short words like
> "hello" that get 
> packed into a single 32 bit word and longer words
> like "bookends" that 
> take 2 32 bit words?"
> 
>       I too found this introduced ambiguity  when
> doing calculations, 
> some  years ago.  Meanwhile, I  just accept it as a
> quirky CF taste for 
> brevity, and when I use long names I put
> distinguishing characters first 
> eg 1bookends, 2bookerwashington, 3bookmaker etc.   

I was looking more at the "trying to get all of
the Starting Forth examples working well" than
at the name collision issue you're talking about.
One of the Starting Forth examples is to type
the phrase:

Dear <giver>, thanks for the <gift>.

Where <giver> and <gift> are configurable.
An ANS Forth solution is

: giver ." Stephanie, " ;
: gift ." bookends." ;
: thanks ." Dear" giver ." Thanks for the" gift ;

I've got a working ColorForth version, but it
currently requires you to manually 
differentiate between long and short words.

Note: This code assumes existence of "stype",
"words" and "nxtw" as defined here: 

http://primarycolorforth.blogspot.com/2006/12/typing-colorforth.html

variable item 0 bookends
: gift item
: dword dup stype 1 + stype ;
variable from 0 stephanie
: giver from dword ;
variable txt 0 dear , thanks for the .
: thanks txt nxtw giver 4 words gift nxtw drop ;
: ok show black screen txt thanks keyboard ;

I suppose I'm thinking too much about this.
I've coded the problem in a reasonable way
and I should just move to the next task.
Someone else may come up with something 
better.  (Any code improvements are more
than welcome).

> 
> Wishing you all a Merry Post-Winter-Solstice and a
> Happy New Year
> 
> Nick Maroudas

And a Merry-Happy all around to you too.

Regards,

John M. Drake

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