Hello, quick question
Keith Falconer
Fred McKenzie
Keith Falconer <MarkA...@RichardSchwarz.org> wrote:
> What's comp.lang.forth.mac about exactly? Is there a FAQ? Thanks!
Keith-
Thats a good question. I'm interested in Forth on the Macintosh, but
don't know much about it.
There certainly isn't much activity here. The last posting I'm aware of
was back in November. With such a low volume of traffic, many news
hosts will eventually drop it.
Fred
Gregory Weston
Fred McKenzie <fm...@aol.com> wrote:
The follow-up made it to my server before the original post did, so I'll
take a stab at addressing both:
The group is about FORTH programming on/for Macs. If you're unfamiliar
with FORTH, it's a programming language that, IIRC, was originally
created as a way to write control systems for telescopes or something
like that. A fair amount of information at Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)>
For the follow-up: No, there really isn't a lot of activity. The
community of FORTH developers is relatively small and I'd be surprised
if it's not shrinking in absolute numbers. On the Mac, I'm really not
sure how much interest there is outside of the MOPS community. So for
jumping-off points and like-minded folks to talk to, it might make more
sense to start here:
<http://powermops.com/>
--
"Harry?" Ron's voice was a mere whisper. "Do you smell something ... burning?"
- Harry Potter and the Odor of the Phoenix
Coos Haak
The name of this language, Forth, is not an acronym like BASIC.
--
Coos
CHForth, 16 bit DOS applications
http://home.hccnet.nl/j.j.haak/forth.html
Gregory Weston
Coos Haak <chf...@hccnet.nl> wrote:
That's true. But it comes from a system whose file system identifiers
were restricted to uppercase, and out of habit many FORTH users and
providers continued to write it that way even when the file system
restrictions were no longer widely relevant. The use of all caps is
stylistic, not indicative of a belief in any deeper meaning.
Compare with Fortran, which used to be officially "FORTRAN" - and still
is in the minds of many of its users - but was never "ForTran" even
though the name is a shortening of "Formula Translation"
Coos Haak
From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-lang/forth-faq/part1/
3.2. Where does the name Forth come from?
The name FORTH was intended to suggest software for the
fourth (next) generation computers, which Moore saw as being
characterized by distributed small computers. The operating
system he used at the time restricted file names to five
characters, so the "U" was discarded. FORTH was spelled in
upper case until the late 70's because of the prevalence of
of upper-case-only I/O devices. The name "Forth" was gener-
ally adopted when lower case became widely available,
because the word was not an acronym.
It's been nearly 30 years now ;-)
Gregory Weston
Coos Haak <chf...@hccnet.nl> wrote:
> Op Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:01:23 -0500 schreef Gregory Weston:
>
Old habits die hard. I recognize and acknowledged that the "proper" form
now is just the initial cap. But the continued use in some quarters of
all caps is a reality, and is implicit in your own citation: "...was
*generally* adopted...."
In short: You're wrong to suggest I'm wrong to continue with the
traditional presentation. They're both valid.
Mike Hore
Also, the name of Mops isn't an acronym either!!! I think I point this
out in the FAQ somewhere.
The above link will work, or <http://www.powermops.org> will take you
straight to the Wiki on the SourceForge project site.
True, we don't have a lot of dicussion on this NG -- those of us doing
actual development of the Mops system have our own SourceForge mailing
list these days. You can join it if you're interested.
Cheers, Mike.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Hore mike_h...@OVE.invalid.aapt.net.au
---------------------------------------------------------------