HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: nick@sw.stratus.com (Nicolas Tamburri)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: "Free" Forth is expensive
Date: 12 Aug 92 14:36:05 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc.

mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) writes:
> I'm not surprised that a non-Forther is not too impressed if all he
> is exposed to are pd implementations.  JForth, for example, offers
> features such as:
> 
> [JForth's advantages deleted]
> 
> ...and it goes on.
> 
> Of course, everyone is free to use the PD forth's for the Amiga.
> These include MVP-FORTH (16-bit and as far as I know, no way to
> call system routines, no debugger, no assembler), AMIGA4TH (32-bit,
> but not much better), and others.
> 
> The use of such systems is undoubtedly going to lead to bitter
> frustrations on a system like the AMiga, where the desire is
> often to create color graphics, sound, small standalone programs,
> etc.  It can be done easily in JForth, but it's a hair-pulling
> experience to even ATTEMPT such things in the pd implementations.
> A 16-bit forth doesn't even have enough available dictionary
> to compile such programs!
> 

You are right Mike;  JForth runs circles around MVP-FORTH.   But as a
former customer of v1 JForth on a borrowed Amiga 1000, I can state that
I would never have plunked down the $99.00 for your system had I not
tried MVP-FORTH first.  In some perverse way,  I needed to know that I
could run Forth on an Amiga;  MVP-FORTH assured me that it was possible.
But its limitations, rather than turning me off, then led me to seek
better alternatives;  in this case JForth.  I don't know if I would have
bought JForth anyway,  by that time I was pretty much into Forth, but I
was also trying to get into C, and let's face it,  the Amiga is geared
toward C.  C looked just as tempting as Forth, it was MVP-FORTH which
made me realize that Forth was viable on it.

This scenario has repeated itself on every machine I've ever had access
to, including a PC and my present Mac.  What I'm now looking for is a
Forth that runs on all of them, with enough support that I can build an
application on the Mac and bring it to the the other platforms.  This
includes having common libraries on all systems which can provide the
same look for all platforms.  A tall order for a hobbyist budget, I know,
but it would be nice if vendors started moving in that directions instead
of providing everything but the kitchen sink in one platform dependent
environment.

I look forward to JForth-386 to compete with Forthmacs-386 :-)

							/nt
From: Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Does anyone read these things!!
Date: 15 Aug 92 03:49:07 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

mentink@wronz.org.nz (B.R.Mentink) writes:

> I have a version of eforth which I have ported to an H8 micro controller. It
> runs very well but I need some extra words that eforth (standard 1.0 version)
> hasn't.

I'm sure a lot of Forth'ers read your message.  If you haven't had any
response, it might be an indication of one of the problems of Forth: everyone
agrees that a library of portable words would be a great idea, but for some
reason, no such library is forthcoming.  :)

Maybe the ANSI standard will be the catalyst that starts the creation of such a
library.  If it did that and nothing else, it would have been worth the effort.

--

Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca
From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth Taught at Schools/Universities
Date: 22 Aug 92 13:26:52 GMT
Organization: EIEI-U

Category 2,  Topic 2
Message 121       Sat Aug 22, 1992
ELLIOTT.C                    at 08:36 EDT
 
 -----via CRS Premium Bulletin Board

 Date: 08-21-92 (00:48)
   To: E.RATHER [ELIZABETH]
 From: MARK SMILEY
 Subj: FORTH TAUGHT AT SCHOOLS/U

 E[>I am trying to satisfy a request from the Navy for
 information about schools E[>and universities that teach Forth.
 They're considering using it for a large E[>project, and are
 concerned about the availability of Forth programmers

 I have taught Forth at two colleges:  Auburn University at
 Montgomery (AUM) (in Alabama), and Goucher College, where I
 currently work. Goucher is located in Towson, MD, which is
 within commuting distance to Anapolis (Naval Academy) and
 Washington D.C.  Since I left AUM, I don't believe they have
 taught any more Forth.  Although I don't teach Forth every year,
 I could easily set up a course on demand if

 PCRelay:PROGCRNR -> #1520 RelayNet (tm)
 4.11         /\/  (410)995-3744   TPC   (301)596-1180  \/\


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From: eaker@ukulele.crd.ge.com (Chuck Eaker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Free Forth
Date: 12 Aug 92 22:29:16 GMT
Reply-To: eaker@ukulele.crd.ge.com
Organization: GE CR&D Computer Science Program

In article <BEVAN.92Aug11091421@jaguar.cs.man.ac.uk>, bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug10.153601.26952@crd.ge.com> eaker@ukulele.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Charles E Eaker) writes:
|>    I'm curious: can you comment on (1) why C++ was proposed instead of
|>    C?
|> 
|> "Because C++ is `objected oriented' and so it must be better"
|> Seriously that is the answer I got when I asked the same question.
|> At this point I just gave up and walked away.

Do not dismiss object-orientation so quickly. I've had the good
fortune of using C++ on a 2 year project in a place where people
literally wrote the book on object-oriented analysis and design
(at least one of them :-). Once you've tried it, you won't go back.

I recently had to use C in a project and I was surprised at how
brain dead it seemed to me compared to C++. I also blew the dust
off of Forth and used it for a few little things. Again, I was
surprised at my reaction.

I now view Forth as completely chaotic.  The list I get when I
type "words" is enormous and in desparate need of some
organization. The documentation is, even for a commercial
implementation, minimal.  Figuring out how to do things and
figuring out how to use some of the optional features just takes
too much time. You have to explore a very large and flat and often
irregular name space.

An object-oriented approach would be a big help in bringing order
to this nightmare. Provide me with a list of the kinds of things I
can create and destroy. Tell me what operations I can perform on
them.  (You mean I can't just use "." to tell an instance of any
class to print itself?  Why do I have to learn a different
vocabulary for each kind of thing?)  Show me examples of how they
can solve simple, common,typical problems. Show me how to create
my own classes. Then leave me alone.

-- 
Chuck Eaker / P.O. Box 8, K-1 3C12 / Schenectady, NY 12301 USA
eaker@crd.ge.com        eaker@crdgw1.UUCP       (518) 387-5964
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
From: ah739@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Leslie J. Somos)
Subject: Re: Forth Taught at Schools/Universities
Reply-To: ah739@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Leslie J. Somos)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 92 13:47:08 GMT


In a previous article, ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) says:

>Category 2,  Topic 2
>Message 116       Thu Aug 06, 1992
>E.RATHER [Elizabeth]         at 00:25 EDT
> 
>Re the recently quoted: > My own view is that a standard should solidify,
>clarify, extract,
> and document existing practice. The problem is in identifying "existing
>practice."  Does it mean:
>   (a) Stuff previously standardized (remember, it's been 10 years since FORTH-
>83)?
 No, at least not without examining it.  Otherwise, you get "but, we've
 _always_ done it this way."  
>   (b) Stuff that one implementor with lots of users has done for years?
 Again, no.  There are vendors that do things their own way, but almost
 _all_ their users are unhappy. 
>   (c) Stuff that most implementors have done some way, but their approaches
>differ (in which case, how to find a synthesis or pick one?)?
>   (d) Stuff that <n> implementors do (in which case, what is <n>? And, as in
>(c), how to resolve different approaches to the same problem?)?

You need both users and vendors on standards committees.
Users alone could come up with all sorts of blue-sky nice-to-have.s,
but have a hard time finding a vendor to implement them.
Vendors alone would stick with what's easiest for them.

>
>These are the issues the standards team has wrestled with to the best of its
>ability.
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>
From: mikc@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Mike Coughlin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth Nutsnbolts Echo?
Date: 22 Aug 92 13:41:41 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization

In article <714207773.0@wyrm.rbbs-net.ORG> Jim.Bilderback@f606.n914.z8.rbbs-net.ORG (Jim Bilderback) writes:
>Sun  08-16-1992    
>  
>Hello folks .. this echo (comp.lang.forth) has just arrived at our   
>local bbs via Internet and i'm wondering if there isn't another Forth
>echo with a bit more application specific type msgs going on? In
>particular .. an echo supporting the (apparently) dreaded and ill
>conceived *free* (there i said it) forths. Are they frustrating and
>oft time torture to learn? yes! Problems with missing our non-existant
>support files? yes! Don't u just want to trash the darn things never
>to see them again ??? YESSS! ... but i won't because they are too
>interesting and too much fun when they work .. rsvp .. jim
>
>GFx+ BBS Eureka,CA [707]442-3684 <HST Dual> 1:125/45 (8:914/606)
>
> * Origin: GFx+ BBS, Eureka CA.[707]442-3684<HST Dual>1:125/45 (8:914/606)

   Since you are reading this from a fidonet BBS, you will receive
messages in a different way than those on GEnie or the Internet.
There is a collection of PD Forth programs that can be sent to you,
but they will be encoded in strange ways. All you have to do is
tell us what your interested in and somebody will work things out.
Many people have used the improperly supported Forth systems
and will give you advice on how to overcome the difficulties. You
just have to stir things up by asking specific questions.
   I hope you will take notes as you work and make improvements on
the doc files and comments of the PD code you use. If more people
would do that, things might get better. As it is now, many people
want to improve Forth code but not many want to improve the docs.
As a beginner, you will clearly see impediments to learning that
experienced Forth programmers will miss.
From: nick@sw.stratus.com (Nicolas Tamburri)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Free Forth
Date: 18 Aug 92 21:26:38 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc.

In article <Bt5qEM.A3s@starnine.com>, mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) writes:
> 
> If someone were to start a large, funded effort to produce a hot
> general-purpose product (game, word processor, etc.), and they
> chose YOU to head up the engineering effort...would you choose
> Forth?

The answer is: depends.  If the project was for one platform, and I had
available a reasonable Forth system then yes.   By reasonable, I mean it
must contain all those things which characterize mainstream languages, most
especially, good integration with the host OS for things such as memory
allocation and file access.  After that, a good interface to system
libraries would be nice.  If those libraries include such things as window
managers on graphics oriented systems, access to them would be even more
essential.  Following that, being able to generate object files would be
nice, although not as important.

If a Forth package has these elements, and I was given the opportunity to choose
it by a management which was even aware of its existence, the I'd choose it.

There are a lot of qualifications to that answer because we both know that
such Forth packages are rare.  Their rarity makes them suspect to management
who likes known quantities.  For this reason, I strongly support the
ANSI effort, that and because it actually addresses things such as memory
allocation and file systems.  But the main reason is that even with some
flaws, (maybe incompletions would be a better term,) it legitamises Forth
as a mainstream language, (optimistic though that may be.)

If the choice was strictly up to me, the answer is a resounding yes.  The
reason I took up Forth in the first place was to program games on small
computers.  I think Forth's strengths on small platforms translates well
to larger platforms in this area.  If I have any reservations, they are
in the area of portability;  but that's another posting.

							/nt
From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Mops [Bug fix]
Date: 17 Aug 92 12:15:16 GMT
Organization: EIEI-U

Category 7,  Topic 40
Message 24        Mon Aug 17, 1992
M.HORE [Mike]                at 05:28 EDT
 
  Hi all Mops users:

Doug Hoffman and I have found and fixed yet another minor bug in the Scroller
class.

Method GETRECT: should now be:

 :m GETRECT:
    get: viewRect  put: tempRect
    get: vscroll?  get: hscroll?  or
    if  16  nil?: ^myView +  dup  stretch: tempRect  then
    get: tempRect  ;m

This will correct some anomalies when Scrollers appear inside Scrollers.  Not
the most common occurrence, but it can happen.

For those who are interested (if you're not, you can stop reading now!), the
problem was that getrect: needs to return not the viewrect itself, but the
larger rect which *includes* the scroll bars.  The viewrect for Scrollers
*excludes* the bars. It's a bit tricky.

getrect: is called on subviews to work out how big they are, so the bars need
to be included; but the viewrect itself is used to set the clip area when
drawing -- we don't want to draw over the bars.

So getrect: can't just return the viewrect for Scrollers -- it needs to return
the bigger rect which includes the bars.  I'd originally forgotten this -- or
more likely, never thought of it at all!!

Cheers,   Mike.
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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Environmental Queries
Date: 22 Aug 92 13:27:17 GMT
Organization: EIEI-U

Category 10,  Topic 33
Message 7         Fri Aug 21, 1992
B.RODRIGUEZ2 [Brad]          at 22:37 EDT
 
At long last...here are the four proposals which I promised to submit re.
ENVIRONMENT? and its warts.  I've sent these in to ANSI, but since I moved the
discussion into this arena, I felt obliged to post them here as well.  Enjoy.

Brad Rodriguez
 B.RODRIGUEZ2 on GEnie   |   bradford@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca
 So many projects....so little time.

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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: An Open ANSI Forth Implementation
Date: 12 Aug 92 11:50:37 GMT
Organization: EIEI-U

Category 10,  Topic 41
Message 37        Wed Aug 12, 1992
E.RATHER [Elizabeth]         at 00:56 EDT
 
Regarding Bevan's point about Borland, AT&T et al "seeding the market" with
free software...please note that these are both large, wealthy and prestigious
organizations.  They can afford to develop a highly polished system and give
it away in volume, and their offering will receive respect and interest
because of their prestige.  These are IMHO the important elements:  the money
to develop a polished product before there is a market, the money to manage
the introduction properly (whether that means giveaways orother types of
promotion), and the market clout/prestige to be listened to.

Unfortunately, Forth has never had these advantages.  It is truly remarkable,
and a powerful testimony to the advantages of the technology, that it has done
as well as it has without them.

Even though it's a lot easier to write a new Forth than a new compiler for
most languages, it is nonetheless quite expensive to produce a full-
functioned, polished, well-tested, well-documented, well-supported product. 
If you're doing it with volunteer labor that you value at what you pay for it,
you're fooling yourself.  And if you produce and distribute anything less than
an excellent product (regardless of what you charge for it) you will be
contributing to Forth's "hacker toy" image.  Remember, your product will be
compared, fairly or not, with systems that probably cost >$1M to produce.
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Free Forth
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 02:55:06 GMT

In article <BEVAN.92Aug13104818@jaguar.cs.man.ac.uk> bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) writes:
>In article <1992Aug12.222916.19843@crd.ge.com> eaker@ukulele.crd.ge.com (Chuck Eaker) writes:
>   In article <BEVAN.92Aug11091421@jaguar.cs.man.ac.uk>, bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) writes:
>   |> "Because C++ is `objected oriented' and so it must be better"
>   |> Seriously that is the answer I got when I asked the same question.
>   |> At this point I just gave up and walked away.
>
>   Do not dismiss object-orientation so quickly.
>
>I'm not dismissing OO, even though I think it has been hyped beyond
>belief.  Look at the sentence I quoted.  Would you take someone
>seriously if they pumped out trash like that?  To me it was a classic
>case of "Emperor's new clothes".
>
>
>   I've had the good fortune of using C++ on a 2 year project in a
>   place where people literally wrote the book on object-oriented
>   analysis and design (at least one of them :-). Once you've tried
>   it, you won't go back.
>
>Well guess what I was doing with C++ back in '86 :-)
>As to going back, I'm not sure as I'm still not sure what OO is.
>Everybody has their own idea about what the essence of OO is and they
>are often conflicting.  I think can currently be called an "object
>based" rather than "object oriented" programmer, but the former is
>just a new label on an old idea.

Once in a while, there's a neat article in Communications of the ACM.
This month, there's one that rags on "Object Oriented Programming."  It
criticizes what IS one of the weaknesses; specifically, classes and
inheritance.  Have you ever seen an example in a text that is actually
about something COMPUTER related, or was it something contrived that
happens to break down into classes in some natural way?  The authors
comment that systems like Smalltalk have proliferations of class trees
that don't really describe what you see in "real life," using the
numeric classes as an example.

One MAJOR weakness is the fact that most class systems don't allow the
subclasses to DISINHERIT features that are unnecessary.  For instance,
a "squares" is clearly a subclass of "rectangles," since a square IS
a rectangle, but NOT vice-versa.  Unfortunately, a square class would
inherit from rectangle the characteristics "length" and "width", which
introduces a redundant characteristic, since a square is a rectangle
with equal sides.  Class systems don't typically let you get rid of that
extra characteristic.

The authors suggest roughly that same phrase "object based" as you do.
It's unfortunate that "object oriented" has so much baggage attached to
it...
-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
From: xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: Forth Taught at Schools/Universities
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 92 08:44:31 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In <3977.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) writes:

>Category 2,  Topic 2
>Message 118       Wed Aug 12, 1992
>E.RATHER [Elizabeth]         at 00:18 EDT
> 
>RE categorizing stuff: CATCH and THROW have been used by Mitch Bradley and (I
>think) John Hayes and others I can't name at this point.

I think that the first published article about CATCH and THROW was by
Klaus Schliesik (sp?) at the ForML conference back in '83 or '84.  It
was new technology then, but it is hardly new technology now.  In fact,
it wasn't all *that* new then.  At the same conference, Don Colburn
presented a paper on the related, but far more sophisticated
exception-trapping mechanism used by Creative Solutions' Forth systems.

>ENVIRONMENT? was requested by a number of users and programmers, sufficiently
>strongly that we made an effort to satisfy their request.  Brad's point is
>that this is invented technology, and I agree that this is one example of
>that.  There aren't many.

It is also (with all due respect to the overworked and underpaid TC
members) one of the only things in dpANS that I feel was badly misdesigned.

>ALLOCATE and FREE, again, came from Bradley in particular, and I believe
>Martin Tracy cited at least a couple of others doing similar things.  Possibly
>Ray Duncan?  It's been several years.

Not only that, but this type of memory management has a *long* history
in the field of general programming and language design.  It may be
somewhat new to Forth (and perhaps even hard to implement on 8-bit
microprocessors), but it is hardly "invented technology".  :-)
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't | NOBODY for President!
xtifr@netcom.COM| need disclaimers | Because Nobody's perfect!!
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
From: maskull@cix.compulink.co.uk (Nerdware Professionals)
Subject: == No Subject ==              
Reply-To: maskull@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 21:34:34 +0000

I recently discovered that MMSFORTH is still available! This was the first
commercial Forth I used, back in the days when I had a TRS-80. It very
quickly became my main programming language.

The two MMS apps I had were FORTHWRITE and DATAHANDLER. My dad used both
of these, and still compares databases to DH. I think he misses it! I
don't blame him. Many DBs are more powerful, but few are as easy to use
or customise.

I miss MMSFORTH itself. I based my own strings extensions on the MMS word
set. The only difference is that mine use a string stack. My own Forth
was strongly influenced by MMSFORTH. Like MMS for DOS, it takes no advant-
age of the 386. Well, almost. The double precision words use EAX etc. For
my own use I think this is acceptable. For a commercial product you have
to try to think of everyone.

It's been a few years since I used a commercial Forth, so I'm glad to see
that MMSFORTH is there if I need it. Sadly, I've become too dependant on
my own Forth and it's strange ways. It would be a luxury to use a fully
documented and mature system for a change! If I wasn't forced to use less
civilised languages than Forth these days, I'm sure I'd appreciate an old
but very familiar friend like MMSFORTH.

Are there any other old MMSFORTH users like me? Could any recent or new
users please comment? How do the current MMS apps compare with the (more
than 10 years) old versions? FORTHCOM interests me in particular.

Martin

'If God had meant Man to live in England, He'd have given him gills.'
                                     - The Burkiss Way to Dynamic Living