Java Browser for xx21

[Louis Frazier <cogniscu@xxxxxxx>]

(HS) comp

Below is written for more general audience and is posted on my home page. 
I include things you all know about to show the scope, and more 
important, to hear from you about things you know better than I. Glad to 
find other artists among us: wayne and sherwin.

                 ---- Java for the People ----

            The Web Browser for the MISC 21 Processors: 

               Forth and Postscript (Ghostscript)  

The heading says it all. Here's a little background:


Then someone needs to cross-assemble the 8086 assembler source into Chuck
Moore's MISC to run on the xx21 and successors. Postscript and Forth are
close relatives. Both are stack oriented, postfix, interpretive, threaded
languages. Postscript was developed in the 1970's by XEROX engineers at
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) to put images on paper. It has proven to
be the most efficient system for doing that job and is in rom on most
high-end laser printers. 

FORTH was developed by Chuck Moore in the 1960's to simplify programming
and speed execution of programs written in higher-level languages. It has
enjoyed success for unusual applications like directing radio telescopes
(positioning spots in space), carpet looms (positioning knots in fabrics)
and as the ultimately simple operating system for embedded systems such as
the one the FED EX man keys when he drops off your package.  It has also
been used for almost every type of business and scientific application,
but it has not been able to keep up with newer languages like C and LISP,
largely because of the cya mentality of most programming managers who want
to go with the crowd. 

Both languages are based on fixed sets of instructions which can be
combined and called by new names, thus extending the language for specific
applications. Both Forth and Postscript consume data and program code
indiscriminately. Thus, new, temporary functions can be combined with the
data stream to handle specific processing requirements at the time of
execution. The Postscript file which your computer sends to its laser
printer contains many functions designed on the fly to control your
document's appearance. The Postscript processing usually happens at the
printer with its own cpu chip reading and executing a copy of Postscript
in rom licensed by Adobe Systems.

Recently, Chuck Moore has developed a FORTH program called OKFORTH which
lets him design super simple, but very fast and inexpensive chips which
optimize the use of stacks, the fundamental principle of both Postscript
and Forth. His first, the MuP21 is a 21-bit processor that runs at 100
mhz. It supports 1 meg of ram, has a large image buffer and puts out a
standard color signal to drive a color monitor. It is programmed in
machine code in a Minimum Instruction Set (MISC) of 2x instructions. His
colleague, Jeff Fox, has produced a standard FORTH for the machine which
is available at www, along with full descriptions of the processor. 

HTML, the current standard for Web files, is childishly inadequate to the
task of formatting screens, much less printed pages. However, every one of
the constantly changing HTML instructions can easily be programmed in
Postscript. Any HTML file enhanced with Postscript functions can print
properly on paper, and will display on a screen with Display Postscript. 
That's Java, Man.

Postscript could be enhanced by Adobe to contain all the functions of some
standard FORTH. Then, any data file sent to a postscript device could also
contain forth functions to process the data on the destination machine to
do such tasks as read local files or devices, set up interactive screens
for information gathering, make decisions about pulling other data from
elsewhere on the Web, etc. 

All of the above is so obvious to people who know even a little about
these systems, that it is undoubtedly under development by many companies
employing thousands of programmers -- with one exception. The xx21
processors are new, and FORTH is not widely used. Thus, the monkey-see
monkey-do managers will put their money where they know they can get
hardware and software support, and customers -- with Intel chips and
Microsoft assemblers and C. 

Maybe the Internet can revolutionize system development by permitting the
great unwashed and underfunded to put together a better system as fast as
the lemmings can get Son of DOS (and 4004, or Pentium) running. 

Here are some things which need to be done:

Find someone who can modify the public-domain C source of a Postscript
look-alike, Ghostscript, by Aladdin systems, and recompile it with the
necessary modifications (ie, i/o capabilities) so that the currently
standard FORTH words can be added to it. (You can download a dos .com 
file to test Ghostscript, and some sample files from my site:
www.tmn.com/Artswire/COGNISCU. I also have the C source on my AT.)

Meanwhile, someone needs to find or develop a FORTH or MISC assembler
communications program to handle access to the web at ISDN speeds, for
starters, graduating to three megahertz or so, to keep us ready for the
infinite bandwidth that Bill Gates predicts by 2005. 

Then, someone needs to cross-assemble the 8086 Ghostscript/FORTH assembler 
source into Chuck Moore's MISC to run on the xx21 and successors.

Then, we the people, need to get to work building hardware according to
Ting's or Fox's latest prototype diagram and start sending Java-like files
back and forth to check it out and also use our systems to access the
web's HTML files just like Netscape, but without all the heavy-handed
advertising and booby-traps at the top of the screen.  A few pull-down
menus from a disappearing tool bar would be plenty, thank you. We can use 
the space for stuff we don't already know - as in Claude Shannon's entropy.


                 -30-