Chuck's latest presentation, CPU Class

[theFox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jeff Fox)]

Dear Low Fat Computing Mail List readers:

Chuck gave an interesting presentation for SVFig on Saturday.  He
talked about Forth, ANS Forth, and Color Forth.  He did a walk through
on a .BMP file with about 500 characters of source.  He said he was
working on a detailed presentation just about ANS Forth.  He talked
for about one hour and covered a few of the topics that people had
asked him to explain.  I made a tape and put it in the store.

John Rible also held the first CPU Class at 10:00.  A few people
visited the chat and image page on the web to participate remotely.
It was however mostly an introduction by John so there was very
little discussion and no hands on work.  I expect the class to
go very much like the classes that he has taught for the UCSC
extension.  This will mean that there will be lots of hands on
experimentation and status reports to John on the progress.
I also taped John's presentation which was about 1 1/2 hours.
I also taped Skip Carter's presentation about Forth system
options for Linux.  The tape is also available in the store.

I also put a tape in the store of a presentation that I did for
FIG last month.  I have been tracking the counters on some of
my web pages.  I finished the transcription of Chuck's 1X Forth
presentation early last week.  The document is the most often
visited document at the site. The count is now up to about 1000.
The Low Fat Computing article has more hits but has been there
for several months.  Dr. Ting's article eForth and Zen is also
popular with about 800 hits since it was posted.

I thought it was interesting that on Saturday Chuck said that
ANS Forth had only added CELLs and POSTPONE to Forth in the
last twenty years.  He felt people could have done more.  
I have told people that they should check in on Chuck's work
every three or four years since that is about how often he
substantially changes his Forth.  In c.l.f people would like
to paint the picture that I want people to "copy what Chuck
is doing this week."  I think it is a shame that so many
people in Forth have no interest in what Chuck is doing
either with hardware or with software.  I think it is a
shame that so many people think they know more about Forth
than Chuck and think they own the term "Forth" now and
that Chuck should use the term any more.

I also think it is sad that there are so many ill-mannered
children in c.l.f who object to a single dissenting voice
against ANS Forth and in support of some of Chuck's ideas.
In fact I don't even support all of Chuck's ideas, but
I have tried to report to them people.  I have learned that
they would rather not know.

Anyone else want to give any feedback about John's introduction
to CPU design?

Jeff Fox           
UltraTechnology