THE EVOLUTION OF FORTH, AN UNUSUAL LANGUAGE by Charles H Moore

[Louis Ohland]

Byte, August 1980, vol 5, no. 8
Starts on page 76, and it goes on for quite a bit...

https://ia802600.us.archive.org/35/items/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language.pdf

[Myron Plichota]

I remember reading this hot off the press! Thanks for posting.

[Louis Ohland]

I read another site with an interview with Chuck Moore that resembled
this, but this is a LOT more detailed...

[JUERGEN]

Thanks for posting.
https://ia802600.us.archive.org/35/items/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language.pdf

And this article solves the "Elizabeth programming experience" as well:
Quoted from the article page 88 - and from the horses mouth:
Chuck Moore

The Second FORTH Programmer Ten years ago there was one FORTH programmer, me.
The second FORTH programmer, Elizabeth Rather, came along in 1971.
That is quite a quantum jump, from one to two; the next step was four (the next two came out of Kitt Peak National Observatory); the growth can be traced from there to the several thousand today.
The first FORTH user was Ned Conklin, head of the NRAO station at Kitt Peak, Arizona.
NRAO runs a millimeter-wave radio telescope that is in great demand by observers, in part because it is responsible over the last 10 years for discovering half of the interstellar molecules
That are known to exist.
FORTH is still running on that telescope at Kitt Peak and on a lot of other telescopes.

[josv...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Are there also new big Forth projects? (Beyond the Philae Lander)

Jos

[Elizabeth D. Rather]

On 1/15/18 12:16 AM, JUERGEN wrote:
> The first FORTH user was Ned Conklin, head of the NRAO station at Kitt Peak, Arizona.
> NRAO runs a millimeter-wave radio telescope that is in great demand by observers, in part because it is responsible over the last 10 years for discovering half of the interstellar molecules
> That are known to exist.
> FORTH is still running on that telescope at Kitt Peak and on a lot of other telescopes.

Sadly, that telescope was closed down in 2000.
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/12meter/

It was operated by the evolving Forth system until then, however, an
unusual 30-year life span (its computers evolved, too, of course).

Cheers,
Elizabeth

--
Elizabeth D. Rather
FORTH, Inc.
6080 Center Drive, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90045
USA

[Elizabeth D. Rather]

On 1/15/18 4:44 AM, josv...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Are there also new big Forth projects? (Beyond the Philae Lander)
>
> Jos

Here is a very recent project:
https://www.forth.com/satellite-earth-station-antenna-controls/

And one from a couple of years ago, which has just invited us back to
work on the next generation:
https://www.forth.com/synchronous-optical-networking/

[john]

In article <DaCdnV4Hr8dJ0sDH...@supernews.com>,
era...@forth.com says...

>
> Here is a very recent project:
> https://www.forth.com/satellite-earth-station-antenna-controls/
>
> And one from a couple of years ago, which has just invited us back to
> work on the next generation:
> https://www.forth.com/synchronous-optical-networking/

Some interesting projects there. a shame about the efficiency in the the
network one. I guess we cant have 100% no matter what we do.

You wouldn't have any experience of pam4 there would you?
(Xilinx are adding it to their ultrascale chips so I'm planning on
adding it to my TIOS spec for chip to chip and module to module comms.)

I was just looking for some practical comments by implementers -
(just how noise sensitive is it in practice in various projects/ capacitive issues etc)

--

john

=========================
http://johntech.co.uk
=========================

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <f4CdnQZ_FOA80cDH...@supernews.com>,

Elizabeth D. Rather <era...@forth.com> wrote:
>On 1/15/18 12:16 AM, JUERGEN wrote:
>> The first FORTH user was Ned Conklin, head of the NRAO station at Kitt Peak, Arizona.
>> NRAO runs a millimeter-wave radio telescope that is in great demand by observers, in part because it is responsible over the last 10 years for discovering half of the interstellar molecules
>> That are known to exist.
>> FORTH is still running on that telescope at Kitt Peak and on a lot of other telescopes.
>
>Sadly, that telescope was closed down in 2000.
>http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/12meter/

I read it, and I'm surprised that you didn't mention that it was closed
down despite continuing merits for the scientific community,
without any operational problems, for purely budget reasons.

>
>It was operated by the evolving Forth system until then, however, an
>unusual 30-year life span (its computers evolved, too, of course).


>
>Cheers,
>Elizabeth
>
>--
>Elizabeth D. Rather
>FORTH, Inc.
>6080 Center Drive, Suite 600
>Los Angeles, CA 90045
>USA

--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

[Howerd]

Hi Louis & Forthers,

I've just uploaded a transcript of Chuck's chapter from BYTE Magazine.
This is copied and pasted from the pdf scanned/OCR'd file, then manually checked.
I would appreciate any comments and feedback, especially about the Listings, as there are clearly some typesetting errors, and my knowledge of Algol, Balgol etc is very limited. There are several non-ASCII characters - presumably these have names and correct UTF 8 equivalents.

www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.pdf

www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.rtf

From the conclusion :

"The tendency seems to be for people to organize themselves in groups. Some of these groups are companies, others are associations. It looks like FORTH is going to be a communal activity in that sense — that it will grow from the work of unstructured clusterings of like-minded people.
The suggestion is that this whole world of FORTH is going to be quite disorganized, uncentralized, and uncontrollable. It's not bad, perhaps it's good."

I think that "unstructured clustering" is a good description of last year's EuroForth - a great experience :-) Not that the event was unstructured, just the motivation of the people to be there...

Cheers,
Howerd

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <735c7177-b427-4bc5...@googlegroups.com>,

Howerd <how...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sunday, 14 January 2018 03:18:09 UTC+1, Louis Ohland wrote:
>> Byte, August 1980, vol 5, no. 8
>> Starts on page 76, and it goes on for quite a bit...

>>=20
>> https://ia802600.us.archive.org/35/items/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BY=

>TE_05-08_The_Forth_Language.pdf
>
>Hi Louis & Forthers,
>
>I've just uploaded a transcript of Chuck's chapter from BYTE Magazine.

>This is copied and pasted from the pdf scanned/OCR'd file, then manually ch=
>ecked.

Great job.
I reread it. I was a subscriber at the time, but didn't appreciate
the article as much as I do now. Forth listings were botched by Byte.

>I would appreciate any comments and feedback, especially about the Listings=
>, as there are clearly some typesetting errors, and my knowledge of Algol, =
>Balgol etc is very limited. There are several non-ASCII characters - presum=
>ably these have names and correct UTF 8 equivalents.=20

There is a BEG IN somewhere that puzzled me, until I realized it was BEGIN.
In general Algol require
>
<SNIP>

>Cheers,
>Howerd

[Alex]

Nice work.

Listing 6 says:

. "PLiI and its associated lCL" should read "PL/I and its associated JCL"
. All the \\ should be //
. DISP =(NEW,KEEP), should be DISP=(NEW,KEEP), (no space before =)

Listing 7 (IBM/360 assembler) is a more than a bit odd. A number of
zeroes 0 have become ohs O and ones 1 are eyes I. There are odd comments
like "COSTS 15 US" which I suspect might be timings (microseconds). It
looks like these are definitions for DUP and DROP rather than PUSH and
POP (same thing, but I'm surprised by the un-Forthy title). I'll try and
work out what it should look like. What page in the Byte article did it
come from?

--
Alex

[minf...@arcor.de]

Am Donnerstag, 18. Januar 2018 05:46:55 UTC+1 schrieb Howerd:
> On Sunday, 14 January 2018 03:18:09 UTC+1, Louis Ohland wrote:
> > Byte, August 1980, vol 5, no. 8
> > Starts on page 76, and it goes on for quite a bit...
> >
> > https://ia802600.us.archive.org/35/items/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language.pdf
>
> Hi Louis & Forthers,
>
> I've just uploaded a transcript of Chuck's chapter from BYTE Magazine.
> This is copied and pasted from the pdf scanned/OCR'd file, then manually checked.
> I would appreciate any comments and feedback, especially about the Listings, as there are clearly some typesetting errors, and my knowledge of Algol, Balgol etc is very limited. There are several non-ASCII characters - presumably these have names and correct UTF 8 equivalents.
>
> www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.pdf
>
> www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.rtf
>

Thanks for this! :-)

My personal first contacts with Forth were around 1978/9.
I was not aware that the first Forths had been written in hilevel like COBOL.

[john]

In article <p3q5mr$74a$1...@dont-email.me>, al...@rivadpm.com says...
>

This link may be of interest to some -

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine

[Howerd]

Hi Alex,

Listings 6 and 7 are on pdf page 86, marked in the document as page 84.
Thanks for the feedback :-)

Cheers,
Howerd

[gavino himself]

On Saturday, January 13, 2018 at 9:18:09 PM UTC-5, Louis Ohland wrote:

nice!

[Howerd]

Hi Editors & Proofreaders,

I've just uploaded an edited version - please re-sync to this one for your proofreading - and thanks!

Cheers,
Howerd

[Howerd]

On Thursday, 18 January 2018 12:12:17 UTC+1, Albert van der Horst wrote:
> In article <735c7177-b427-4bc5-ab43-98f8882d....oglegroups.com>,

Hi Albert,
I found and fixed the "BEG IN" (thanks for finding this one) and also a "F ACE", plus a few O's that should have been 0's.

> In general Algol require
This looks like it got cropped - I'm curious to know how it continues!

Cheers,
Howerd

[Alex]

Got it; it was pretty accurately transcribed by you -- but wrongly
typeset from a very odd listing (it contains coding errors). Here's my
best shot at it. BAL was column sensitive, with

1 label
9 opcode
15 operands
40 comments

The output is the assembler output, hence hex & line numbers. I've tried
to reflect that here. Plus, some of this has been hand hacked before it
was typeset; DUP is created via a macro expansion (line numbers with +)
but DROP appears to have had the macro NAME edited out, and the code has
an error at line 845.

Listing 7: The FORTH words PUSH and POP written in IBM 360 assembly
language.

0056 830 L18 DC AL2(*-L17)
03445550 831 NAME 3,X'445550',0 DUP
00 832+ DC AL1(3),X'445550'
833+ DC X'0'
834+ ORG *-2-V0
835+ DS 0H
836+ ORG *+V0+1
400004 837+ DC AL1(0*X'40'+X'40'),AL2(4)
5AC0 6014 00014 838 PUSH A SP,MFOUR COSTS 15 US
5040 C000 00000 839 ST T,0(,SP)
19CB 840 CR SP,DP
0729 841 BCR 2,NEXT BHR
47F0 667C 0067C 842 B ABORT
001A 843 L19 DC AL2(*-L18)
0444D2CF50400008 844 DC AL1(4),X'44D2CF50',X'40',AL2(8) DROP
41C0 C004 00004 845 LA SP,4(,SP)
5840 C004 00004 846 POP L T,4(,SP) COSTS 21 US
41C0 C004 00004 847 LA SP,4(,SP)
59C0 602C 0002C 848 C SP,SP00
07C9 849 BCR 12,NEXT BNHR
47F0 667C 0067C 850 B ABORT


If I had written this, it would look like something like this (using a
much smarter NAME macro but still the goofy offset to next word via *-Lnn);

L18 DC AL2(*-L17)
NAME CL3'DUP' DUP
PUSH LA SP,-4(,SP) COSTS 15 US
ST T,0(,SP)
CR SP,DP
BHR NEXT
B ABORT
L19 DC AL2(*-L18)
NAME CL4'DROP' DROP
POP L T,4(,SP) COSTS 21 US
LA SP,4(,SP)
C SP,SP00
BNHR NEXT
B ABORT
...



--
Alex

[Howerd]

Hi Alex,

Thanks - I've updated the docs again.
I removed a few spaces to line the columns up vertically - is this correct?
When I copied and pasted from your post it lost something in translation.
Perhaps you could check it again :-)

The links again :
www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.pdf
www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.rtf

Cheers,
Howerd

[Alex]

On 18-Jan-18 17:56, Howerd wrote:
\

>
> Hi Alex,
>
> Thanks - I've updated the docs again.
> I removed a few spaces to line the columns up vertically - is this correct?
> When I copied and pasted from your post it lost something in translation.
> Perhaps you could check it again :-)
>
> The links again :
> www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.pdf
> www.inventio.co.uk/The_Evolution_of_FORTH,_an_Unusual_Language_2018Jan18.rtf
>
> Cheers,
> Howerd
>

Looks good. Listing 6 needs updated:

Listing 6:
The NEXT procedure in PL/I and its associated JCL (Job Control Language)
statements (lines 1 thru 7).
...
//SYSUT2 DD DSNAME=OUTLIB,UNIT=2314,DISP=(NEW,KEEP),

--
Alex

[Howerd]

Hi Alex,

> Looks good.
Thanks!

> Listing 6 needs updated:
Not sure what your line of code represents... could you elaborate please?

The latest versions of the two files have a time stamp of 18:53.
What changes would you recommend from that baseline?

[Louis Ohland]

> zeroes 0 have become ohs O and ones 1 are eyes I. There are odd comments
> like "COSTS 15 US" which I suspect might be timings (microseconds).

http://www.forth.org/fd/FD-V01N6.pdf
FORTH DIMENSIONS I/6, page 65

"Here is a rather later version of FORTH coded for the IBM 360. [Figure
8. J Those are the routines PUSH and POP. PUSH cost 15 microseconds on
an IEM 360-50."

If you look at the article, written by Charles Moore, it sure as heck
resembles the story in BYTE....

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2018 01:05:23 GMT, "Elizabeth D. Rather"
<era...@forth.com> wrote:

> On 1/15/18 4:44 AM, josv...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Are there also new big Forth projects? (Beyond the Philae Lander)
>>
>> Jos
>
> Here is a very recent project:
> https://www.forth.com/satellite-earth-station-antenna-controls/
>
> And one from a couple of years ago, which has just invited us back to
> work on the next generation:
> https://www.forth.com/synchronous-optical-networking/
>
>

At last! a recent real-life Forth app!

https://www.radeuslabs.com/8200acu-announced/

--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2018 01:05:23 GMT, "Elizabeth D. Rather" <era...@forth.com>
wrote:

> On 1/15/18 4:44 AM, josv...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Are there also new big Forth projects? (Beyond the Philae Lander)
>>
>> Jos
>
> Here is a very recent project:
> https://www.forth.com/satellite-earth-station-antenna-controls/
>
> And one from a couple of years ago, which has just invited us back to
> work on the next generation:
> https://www.forth.com/synchronous-optical-networking/
>
>