[MachineForth] Code Size, consulting vs chips

[Roger Ivie <IVIE@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Fox said:
>P.S.  It is nice to know that there are at least
>a couple of people interested in MachineForth and
>in this list.  I hope I don't drive anyone away
>with my long posts about all sorts of stuff
>related to the subject.

I don't mind the long-winded posts. There's usually something interesting
said in them.

BTW, is there a good reason Chuck didn't just use R for A in the X18?
Seems to me there might be a bunch of reasons to do it that way:

1) X18 lacks >R; using R for A would make A! into >R, recovering that
   functionality.

2) Something like : LIT @+ ; would get rid of the need for a special
   opcode to deal with literals if R were used as A. Not saying that's
   necessarily a good idea (it may be the case that literals are used
   frequently enough to warrant a special opcode; I haven't studied the
   problem).

I thought of one other reason it makes sense, but it escapes me at the 
moment.

About the only reason I can think of it being a bad idea is that it
makes calling subroutines which use a value preset in A difficult;
you'd need something like an OVER for the return stack if that were 
important.

Roger Ivie
ivie@xxxxxxxxxx
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