Comments and questions

[John Drake <drake@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings all!

I ran accross the mailing list archive while reading a post in c.l.f on
"when will iTV or F21 be ready"?  Which reminds me, when will
it be ready?  (The poster was using an MuP21 and was having
heating problems and was wondering if the F21 overcomes those
problems.)

Anyway there's a lot of good info in the archive.  And Jeff I can't
wait to read the rest of the coverage on Chuck's latest talk.

I would like, however, to comment on your statement about
"...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."  I agree that some people in c.l.f
are ill-mannered in their approach.  But others, such as Elizibeth
Rather, did bring up some valid critizisms of your assessment
of ANS vs Machine Forth.  Basically its too early to draw many
conclusions about the two other than the obvious, machine forth
is smaller and machine forth is a better fit for MISC chips.

But when looking at your experience with the JPEG routine
there are just too many variables such as the training of the
two programmers, and the fact that the ANS programmer made
a bad decision to go with using innefficient C code as a base
to begin with.

I think it's important to look at all these issues lest someone think
they're automatically going to get faster smaller code simply by
switching to Machine Forth.  Some in c.l.f. have mis-read what
Machine Forth really is.  I know I've been confused, though I
think I finally have the hand of it.  Machine Forth is not simply
"forth designed for whatever machine you're using".  If so Pentium
Machine Forth would look much different from MISC Machine
Forth.  Machine Forth, like other Forths, implements a virtual
machine, but that VM is different from "traditional" Forths and
it's a VM that fits hand in glove with current MISC design.  But
is Machine Forth optimum for every other chip out there?  For
example, SWAP was left out because it was harder to implement
into Chuck's design.  But on other chips SWAP is as least as
efficient to do as OVER (if not more).  I only point this out
because in the past in c.l.f. when I've asked questions about how
certain Machine Forth features might be done on a Pentium I've
gotten answers from well meaning, but IMHO misguided MF
fans that seem to be off-base.  Then again I might still be out
in left field on this one.  :-)