New to Retro

[Zachary Kline]

Hi All,
I'm quite new to both Forth as a programming language and Retro in
particular. I just thought I'd take a bit to introduce myself.
Programming-wise, I'm largely self-taught, having dabbled with various
languages over the years. I just find forth as a concept intriguing
and Retro in particular seems easy to understand along with appealing
to a certain liking I have for old ways of doing things.
All that being said, I have a couple questions.
1. As a matter of interest, is there any particular reason why Retro
parses text in the way it does? (I.E. at spaces, without waiting for a
return like most other Forths seem to? It's nothing I object to, I'm
just curious.
2. I noticed some discussion looking through the archives of the group
about possible syntax coloring. I'm a blind computer user, and thus
syntax colors are quite useless for me. I was wondering how essential
they might be to using the language. (I've read about ColorForth, for
instance.)
Other than these basic questions, I guess I'll just keep puttering
around with Retro and see what I can come up with. It's been quite
fun so far.
Thanks much,
Zack.

[Charles Childers]

Hi Zack,

1) The behavior of the interpreter actually goes back to the early work on Retro 4.x, which had a similar approach. I've personally found this to work quite well, and it significantly simplifies the interpreter implementation.

2) Syntax coloring is not essential to Retro and is not part of the core language, so you shouldn't have any problems in that regard.

-- crc