Forth Programming Language FAQ: Part 1 of 6, General Information

J. D. Verne

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comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions (1/6): Gen-
eral/Misc
M. Anton Ertl, an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at

____________________________________________________________

Table of Contents:

1. Acknowledgements

2. comp.lang.forth FAQs

3. General Questions

3.1. What is Forth?

3.2. Why and where is Forth used?

3.3. What language standards exist for Forth?

3.4. What is an RFI?

3.5. What is the Forth Interest Group?

4. Flame baits

4.1. Commercial vs. free Forth systems

4.2. Free Forth systems are bad for Forth.

4.3. Blocks vs. files

5. Miscellaneous

5.1. Where can I find a C-to-Forth compiler?

5.2. Where can I find a Forth-to-C compiler?

5.3. RECORDS in Forth?

5.4. Why does THEN finish an IF structure?
______________________________________________________________________

1. Acknowledgements

This FAQ is based on previous work by Gregory Haverkamp, J. D. Verne,
and Bradford J. Rodriguez.

2. comp.lang.forth FAQs

The comp.lang.forth FAQ is published in six parts, corresponding to
these six sections. This part is the General/Misc FAQ, where the
questions not covered in the other FAQs are answered. The six parts
are:

o General questions <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/faq-
general.html>

o Online resources <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/forl.html>

o Forth vendors <ftp://forth.org/pub/Forth/FAQ/vendors>

o Forth systems <ftp://forth.org/pub/Forth/FAQ/systems>

o Books, periodicals, tutorials <ftp://forth.org/pub/Forth/FAQ/books>

o Forth groups & organizations <ftp://forth.org/pub/Forth/FAQ/groups>

These FAQs are intended to be a brief overview of the tools and
information available for the new FORTHer. For a historical
reference, programming paradigms, and deep technical information try
some of the listed references. For general questions on the internet,
or the methods used to get this information, try these other Usenet
groups:

o news.announce.newusers

o news.newusers.questions

o news.announce.important

3. General Questions

3.1. What is Forth?

Forth is a stack-based, extensible language without type-checking. It
is probably best known for its "reverse Polish" (postfix) arithmetic
notation, familiar to users of Hewlett-Packard calculators: to add two
numbers in Forth, you would type 3 5 + instead of 3+5. The
fundamental program unit in Forth is the "word": a named data item,
subroutine, or operator. Programming in Forth consists of defining new
words in terms of existing ones. The Forth statement

______________________________________________________________________
: SQUARED DUP * ;
______________________________________________________________________

defines a new word SQUARED whose function is to square a number (mul-
tiply it by itself). Since the entire language structure is embodied
in words, the application programmer can "extend" Forth to add new
operators, program constructs, or data types at will. The Forth
"core" includes operators for integers, addresses, characters, and
Boolean values; string and floating-point operators may be optionally
added.

3.2. Why and where is Forth used?

Although invented in 1970, Forth became widely known with the advent
of personal computers, where its high performance and economy of
memory were attractive. These advantages still make Forth popular in
embedded microcontroller systems, in locations ranging from the Space
Shuttle to the bar-code reader used by your Federal Express driver.
Forth's interactive nature streamlines the test and development of new
hardware. Incremental development, a fast program-debug cycle, full
interactive access to any level of the program, and the ability to
work at a high "level of abstraction," all contribute to Forth's
reputation for very high programmer productivity. These, plus the
flexibility and malleability of the language, are the reasons most
cited for choosing Forth for embedded systems.

3.3. What language standards exist for Forth?

An American National Standard for Forth, ANSI X3.215-1994, is accepted
worldwide as the definitive Forth standard. ("ANS Forth")

IEEE Standard 1275-1994, the "Open Firmware" standard, is a Forth
derivative which has been adopted by Sun Microsystems, HP, Apple, IBM,
and others as the official language for writing bootstrap and driver
firmware.

Prior Forth standards include the Forth-83 Standard and the Forth-79
Standard issued by the Forth Standards Team. The earlier FIG-Forth,
while never formally offered as such, was a de facto "standard" for
some years.

"FORTH STANDARDS Published standards since 1978 are Forth 79 and
Forth 83 from the Forth Standard Team, and ANS Forth - document
X3.215-1994 - by the X3J14 Technical Committee. The most recent
standard, ANS Forth, defines a set of core words and some optional
extensions and takes care to allow great freedom in how these words
are implemented. The range of hardware which can support an ANS Forth
Standard System is far wider than any previous Forth standard and
probably wider than any programming language standard ever. See web
page <http://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/uathena.htm> for latest
details. Copies of the standard cost $193, but the final draft of ANS
Forth is free and available (subject to copyright restrictions) via
ftp..." --Chris Jakeman, apvpeter.demon.co.uk

The (un)official ANS Forth document is available in various formats at
<http://www.taygeta.com/forthlit.html> and at
<ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/>

To get yourself on the ANS-Forth mailing list, consult the various
README files at <ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/>.

Two unofficial test suites are available for checking conformance to
the ANS Standard Forth:

o John Hayes has written a test suite to test ANS Standard Systems
(available through <http://www.taygeta.com/forth.html>).

o JET Thomas has written a test suite to test ANS Standard Programs:
<ftp://forth.org/pub/Forth/ANS/stand4th.zip>

3.4. What is an RFI?

A Request For Interpretation. If you find something in the standard
document ambiguous or unclear, you can make an RFI, and the TC
(technical committee), that produced the standard, will work out a
clarification. You can make an RFI by mailing it to gr...@minerva.com
and labeling it as RFI. The answers to earlier RFIs are available at
ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/queries/.

3.5. What is the Forth Interest Group?

The Forth Interest Group "FIG" was formed in 1978 to disseminate
information and popularize the Forth language, and it remains the
premier organization for professional Forth programmers. FIG
maintains a Web page at <http://www.forth.org/forth.html>, with a
more complete introduction to the Forth language, and links to the Web
pages of many Forth vendors.

4. Flame baits

Some statements spawn long and heated discussions where the
participants repeat their positions and ignore the arguments of the
other side (flame wars). You may want to avoid such statements.

Here, I present some regularly appearing flame baits and the positions
you will read (so you don't have to start a flame war to learn them).

4.1. Commercial vs. free Forth systems

"You get what you pay for. With a commercial Forth you get commercial
documentation and support. We need commercial Forth systems or Forth
will die."

"I have had good experiences with free Forths. I cannot afford a
commercial Forth system. I want source code (some commercial vendors
don't provide it for the whole system). Examples of bad support from
commercial software vendors. Without free Forth systems Forth will
die."

4.2. Free Forth systems are bad for Forth.

"Anyone can write a bad Forth and give it away without documentation
or support; after trying such a system, nobody wants to work with
Forth anymore. Free Forths give Forth a bad name. Free Forths take
business away from the vendors."

"Many people learned Forth with fig-Forth. There are good free Forths.
Most successful languages started with (and still have) free
implementations. Languages without free implementations (like Ada,
Eiffel and Miranda) are not very popular."

4.3. Blocks vs. files

The discussions on this topic are much cooler since Mike Haas has
dropped from comp.lang.forth.

"Everyone is using files and all third-party tools are designed for
files. Files waste less space. Blocks lead to horizontal, unreadable
code. Blocks make Forth ridiculous."

"We are not always working under an operating system, so on some
machines we don't have files. We have very nice block editors and
other tools and coding standards for working with blocks (e.g., shadow
screens)."

5. Miscellaneous

5.1. Where can I find a C-to-Forth compiler?

There have been roumors about such a compiler at Harris (for the RTX
chip) and elsewhere. The most concrete answer to this question has
come from Stephen Pelc (s...@mpeltd.demon.co.uk):

MPE has produced a C to stack-machine compiler. This generates tokens
for a 2-stack virtual machine. The code quality is such that the token
space used by compiled programs is better than that of the commercial
C compilers we have tested against. This a consequence of the virtual
machine design. However, to achieve this the virtual machine design
has local variable support.

The tokens can then be back end interpreted, or translated to a Forth
system. The translater can be written in high level Forth, and is
largely portable, except for the target architecture sections.

These are not shareware tools, and were written to support a portable
binary system.

5.2. Where can I find a Forth-to-C compiler?

An unsupported prototype Forth-to-C compiler is available at
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/forth2c.tar.gz>. It is
described in the EuroForth'94 paper
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl&maierhofer95.ps.gz>.
Another Forth-to-C compiler is supplied with Rob Chapman's
<mailto:r...@idacom.hp.com> Timbre
<http://www.taygeta.com/forthcomp.html> system.

5.3. RECORDS in Forth?

Many packages for data structuring facilities like Pascal's RECORDs
and C's structs have been posted. E.g., the structures of the Forth
Scientific Library ( <http://www.taygeta.com/fsl/fsl_structs.html>) or
the structures supplied with Gforth
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/struct.fs>.

5.4. Why does THEN finish an IF structure?

Some people find the way THEN is used in Forth unnatural, others do
not.

According to Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary, then" (adv.) has
the following meanings:

2b: following next after in order ... 3d: as a necessary
consequence (if you were there, then you saw them).

Forth's THEN has the meaning 2b, whereas THEN in Pascal and other pro-
gramming languages has the meaning 3d.

If you don't like to use THEN in this way, you can easily define ENDIF
as a replacement:

______________________________________________________________________
: ENDIF POSTPONE THEN ; IMMEDIATE
______________________________________________________________________

J. D. Verne

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Archive-name: forth/FAQ/vendors
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comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions, part 3 of 6
Forth Vendors

Send all Corrections, Additions, and/or Deletions to:
L. Greg Lisle L.G....@ieee.org

These firms are primarily software, systems and support

FirmWorks; Mitch Bradley; 415 917-0100
480 San Antonio Rd, Ste 115; Mountain View; CA 94040; USA
Open Firmware, ForthMon, Forthmacs; in...@firmworks.com; fax: 415 917-6990
Specialists in IEEE Std 1275 Boot Firmware

Forth Interest Group; John D. Hall; 510 893-6784
PO Box 2154; Oakland; CA 94621; USA
" "; f...@taygeta.com; fax: 510 535-1295
Literature & Software Source

FORTH, Inc; Elizabeth Rather; 800 553-6784
111 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Ste 300 ; Manhattan Beach; CA 90266; USA
polyFORTH ; ERA...@forth.com; fax: 310 318-7130
Other services include 5-day courses in introductory and

FORTH, Inc; Steve Agarwal; 800 553-6784
111 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Ste 300 ; Manhattan Beach; CA 90266; USA
chipFORTH; SAGA...@forth.com; fax: 310 318-7130
More than 9 cross-development targets

Laboratory Microsystems, Inc. (LMI); Ray Duncan; 310 306-7412
PO Box 10430, Marina del Rey, CA 90295 ; Los Angeles; CA 90066; USA
UR/FORTH (16-bit), 80386 UR/FORTH (32-bit), WinForth, LMI ;
dun...@nic.cerf.net; fax: 310 301-0761
WinForth, LMI Forth-83 Metacompiler

MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd.; Stephen Pelc; +44 1703 631441
133 Hill Lane ; Southampton; -- SO15 5AF ; England
PowerForth, ProForth ; sa...@mpeltd.demon.co.uk; fax: +44 1703 339691
Large range of cross compilers

Miller Microcomputer Services; A. Richard Miller; 508 653-6136
61 Lake Shore Road ; Natick; MA 01760-2099 ; USA
MMSFORTH ; dmi...@im.lcs.mit.edu; fax:
MMSFORTH and many application modules are available in native

Mountain View Press, Division of Epsilon Lyra, Inc.; Glen Haydon; 415 747-0760
Star Rt 2 Box 429; La Honda; CA 94020-9726 ; USA
MVP Forth (which I wrote)and other public domain ;
gha...@forsythe.stanford.edu; fax: 415 747 0760 Ext 3
Literature & Software

MP7; Marc Petremann; (33) 1 43 03 40 36
17, allee de la Noiseraie; F - 93160 NOISY LE GRAND; ; France
Turbo-Forth; 10064...@compuserve.com; fax:

Offete Enterprises, Inc.; C.H. Ting; 415 574-8250
1306 South B St.; San Mateo; CA 94402; USA
eFORTH,F83&; tin...@ccmail.apldbio.com; fax: 415 571-5004
Books & Software for figForth, F83, FPC etc

These Firms are primarily hardware vendors

Ampro Computers Inc.; ; 408 522-4825
990 Almanor Ave.; Sunnyvale; CA 94086; USA
" "; techs...@ampro.com; fax: 408 720-1305
SBC

Inovative Integration; James Henderson; 818 865-6150
31352 Via Colinas #101; Westlake Village; CA 91362; USA
; ; fax: 818 879-1770
TMS320C31, C32, C25, C44

Mosaic Industries, Inc; Patrick Campbell; 510 790-1255
5437 Central Ave Ste 1; Newark; CA 94560; USA
" "; ; fax: 510 790-0925
QED SBC

Saelig Company; Alan Lowne; 716 425-3753
1193 Moseley Rd.; Victor; NY 14564; USA
" "; 7104...@compuserve.com; fax: 716 425-3835
Rep for Triangle Data Svs

Silicon Composers Inc.; George Nicol; 415 961-8778
655 W. Evelyn Ave. #7; Mountain View; CA 94041; USA
" "; ; fax: 415 961-6778
RTX 2000 & SC32 boards

Triangle Digital Services Ltd.; Peter Rush; +44-181-539-0285
223 Lea Bridge Road; London; UK E1O 7NE; England
TDS2020 &; 1000...@COMPUSERVE.COM; fax: +44-181-558-8110
SBC w/ on board Forth

Vesta Technology, Inc; Cyndi Reish; 303 422-8088
7100 W. 44th Ave Ste 101; Wheat Ridge; CO 80033; USA
Forth-83+; ; fax: 303 422-9800
SBC w/ Forth in ROM

These Firms are primarily custom consulting

4th Wave Computers Ltd.; Peter Caven; 905 335-6844
2314 Cavendish Drive ; Burlington; ON L7P 3P3; Canada
" "; p.c...@ieee.org; fax:
Custom SW Development in Forth & C

A Working Hypothesis, Inc; Paul Frenger; 713 293-9484
PO Box 820506; Houston; TX 77282; USA
" "; 70410...@Compuserve.com; fax:

AM Research; Albert Mitchell; 800 949-8051
4600 Hidden Oaks Lane; Loomis; CA 95650-9479; USA
" "; so...@netcom.com; fax: 916 652-6642
8051, 6811 & 80C166 Forth Dev Systems

Bernd Paysan; Bernd Paysan; ++49 89 798557
Stockmannstr. 14 ; 81477 Muenchen; FRG ; Germany
BigForth ; pay...@informatik.tu-muenchen.de; fax: ++49 89 794378
Object Oriented

Blue Star Systems; Mike Warot;
PO Box 4043; Hammond; IN 46324; USA
Forth/2 ; ka9...@interaccess.com; fax:
A direct threaded implementation of forth for OS/2 text mode, 32 bit

Compucyber, Inc.; Boris Bibershtein; 416 733-1630
PO Box 3182; North York; ON M2M 3A6; Canada
DOS; ; fax:
both F-PC and LMI Forth

Delta Research; Phil Burk; 415 453-4320
PO Box 151051; San Rafael; CA 94915; USA
JForth ; ph...@3do.edu; fax:
JForth is a subroutine thread Forth for Amiga.

Frank Sergeant; Frank C. Sergeant;
809 W. San Antonio St. ; San Marcos; TX 78666; USA
Pygmy ; serg...@axiom.net; fax:
I am recommending and/or using Pygmy or one of my specialized

Frog Peak Music; Larry Polansky; 603 448-8837
PO Box A36 ; Hanover; NH 03755; USA
HMSL - Hierarchical Music Specification Language ; ph...@3do.edu; fax:
HMSL is a set of music related Forth extensions based on

L Squared Electronics; L. G. Lisle; 910 924-0629
2160 Foxhunter Ct.; Winston-Salem; NC 27106; USA
Pygtools, Pygmy; L.SQ...@GEnie.com; fax:
Engineering consulting using Forth for industry

Michael Hore; Michael Hore; +61-2-557-5836
54 Frederick St ; Sydenham; NSW 02044; Australia
Mops ; mi...@zeta.org.au; fax:
Mops is a PD OOP system

Redshift Limited; Charlie Springer; 206 564-3315
726 No. Locust Lane; Tacoma; WA 98406; USA
" "; RedF...@AOL.com; fax:
A simple 32 bit indirect threaded Forth for ARM

Rob Chapman; Rob Chapman; 403 430-2605
11120-178 st.; Edmonton; AB T5S 1P2; Canada
botKernel, Timbre; r...@idacom.hp.com; fax: 403 430-2772

Science Applications International Corp.; Norman Smith; 615 482-9031
301 Laboratory Road ; Oak Ridge; TN 37831; USA
Until, LMI, Uniforth ; smi...@orvb.saic.com; fax: 615 482-6828
Write Your Own Programming Lang. w/ C++

T-Recursive Technology; B.J. Rodriguez; 905 308-3698
221 King St. East, Suite 32 ; Hamilton; ON L8N 1B5 ; Canada
; B...@headwaters.com; fax: 519 986-4266
Contract programming & hardware design for small/embedded systems

TOS Systems Inc.; Roger Stern; 617 431-2456
PO Box 81-128; Wellesley; MA 02181; USA
LMI; rst...@world.std.com; fax: 617 431-2456
Software & Hardware Consulting

Transport Control Technology Ltd.; Paul Bennett; +44 (0) 117-9499861
7 Broadfield Ave, Kingswood; Bristol; BS15 1HX; UK
" "; enq...@transcontech.co.uk; fax:
Company Emphasizes Safety Critical Systems

Ultra Technology; Jeff Fox; 510 848-2149
2510 10th St.; Berkekey; CA 94710; USA
P21Forth ; jf...@netcom.com; fax:
I do consulting on systems besides MuP21 and F21,

J. D. Verne

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comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions, part 4 of 6
Forth Systems: Commercial, Shareware, and Freeware

Stephen J. Bevan, 19 Sept 1995
Bradford J. Rodriguez, 7 Feb 1996
Jon D. Verne, 1 Mar 1996

Please send omissions or corrections to Jon D. Verne <jve...@acs.ryerson.ca>.

[This FAQ is adopted in its entirety from the "implementations" FAQ produced
by Stephen J. Bevan, last updated September 1995. Thanks Stephen! -bjr]

------------------------------

Table of Contents:
[1] Forth for the 8051/8031
[2] Forth for a PC
[3] 32-bit protected-mode PC Forth
[4] Forth for Windows (3.1/NT/95)
[5] Forth for OS/2
[6] Forth for the 6811/68HC16
[7] Forth written in C
[8] Forth for UNIX
[9] Forth for a Sun
[10] Forth for a MAC
[11] Forth for an Amiga
[12] Forth for an Atari ST
[13] Forth for a Transputer
[14] Forth for a Tandy TRS-80
[15] Forth for the Apple II
[16] Forth for 68000 boards (including cross development from PCs)
[17] Forth for (miscellaneous) DSP chips
[18] Forth for VMS
[19] Forth for playing with Music
[20] PD/ShareWare Forth for the BrouHaHa-7245
[21] Forth that isn't necessarily Forth
[22] Forth Vendors/Authors
[23] Contributors to the FAQ

Search for [#] to get to section number '#' quickly. Please note that the
sections are in "digest" form so cooperating NEWS/MAIL readers can step
through the sections easily.

Recent Changes:
95-07-22 bevan Added wpforth listing.
95-07-22 bevan Added OOF listing.
95-07-22 bevan Added Ale Forth listing.
95-07-22 bevan Added gforth description.
95-08-07 bevan Updated 51forth address.
95-08-07 bevan Added author for Pygmy Forth.
95-08-07 bevan Added MacQForth entry.
95-09-13 bevan Updated New Micros address information.
95-09-19 bevan Updated Apple II info. wrt LWV latest Apple II catalogue.
96-01-01 bjr Changed taygeta path.
96-03-01 jdv Added TURBO-Forth listing. Editted duplicate info.
96-04-01 jdv Cut & pasted. Updated Gforth listings.
96-05-01 jdv Updated MacForth listing.
96-06-15 jdv Removed stale DSP listings.
96-06-19 jdv Updated FORTH, Inc., MVP, & Pocket Forth info

Please Note:
1. Some of these Forth systems are listed as being available from particular
anonymous ftp addresses, or from "good archives". Please try and use as
close a site to you as possible.
2. Most of the vendors mentioned herein can supply a Forth system for a wide
variety of platforms. If you can't find a Forth system for your platform
explicitly listed, try any/all of the vendors listed.
3. If an entry is short it is probably because the system is available on
more than one machine. Company addresses, and contact information are in
section [22], below.
4. You may quote from this FAQ freely, on the one condition that credit is
given to the contributors. Some terms mentioned in this document are
known to be trademarks or service marks. However, the author(s) have
made no real attempt to mark them as such. The reader should contact the
appropriate companies for complete information regarding trademarks and
registration. 'Nuff said.

------------------------------

Subject: [1] Forth for the 8051/8031

Commercial:
AM Research offer amrFORTH; a cross-development system for the 8051 that
features a kernel of less than 700 bytes.

FORTH, Inc.: chipFORTH; an interactive cross-development tool for
embedded systems.

Laboratory Microsystems, Inc. (LMI) sell an 8051 system.

Mikrap and Forth Systeme sell SwissForth and act as agents for LMI.

MicroProcessor Engineering, Ltd. (MPE) offer the Forth5 Cross Compiler.

Offete: 8051 eForth, C. H. Ting. A small ROM based Forth system with
source code in MASM for $25.

Free:
William H. Payne, the author of "Embedded Controller Forth for the
8051 Family", has made all the code for the system described in his book
available. Please see ftp://asterix.inescn.pt/pub/forth/8051/read51.txt

EFORTH51.ZIP may be downloaded free of charge from the RealTime
Control and Forth Board (RCFB) [see] or from the GEnie Forth Interest
Group RoundTable.

51forth is a subroutine threaded Forth by Scott Gehmlich.
ftp://fims-ftp.massey.ac.nz/pub/GMoretti/51forth.zip [APH:950807]

CamelForth/51 by Brad Rodriguez is an ANSI Standard Forth that is free for
non-commercial work (negotiate with the author if you want to use it in
a commercial product).
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Camel/cam51-11.zip [SJB:950721]

------------------------------

Subject: [2] Forth for a PC

Commercial:
FORTH, Inc.: polyFORTH; Real-time system for DOS computers, including
libraries for math, graphics, database, GUIs, and many other functions.

Harvard Softworks sells HS/FORTH that can link with object files. It
makes full use of extended memory, and comes with an optimizer, sound,
graphics, and 8087 libraries.

MicroMotion: MasterFORTH. [see also: 15]

Miller Microcomputer Services (MMS) offer MMSFORTH V2.5 for systems with
and without DOS.

MPE: PC PowerForth Plus v3.2 and Modular Forth v3.6.

LMI offer PC/FORTH, in 16- and 32-bit implementations. They provide
libraries for telecommunications, 8087 support, custom characters,
target compiler, and more. Also: 8080 FORTH, and 8086 FORTH.

MP7: TURBO-Forth. Four versions optimized for specific CPU's. Also:
FASTGRAF; an I/O and graphics package for TURBO-Forth. [JDV:960216]

Free:
eForth is a very portable, ANS-aligned, public-domain Forth that comes
with all sources and only 29 words in assembler. [see also: 1, 3, 8]

Golden Porcupine Forth, v92.5 by Alexandr Larionov. Distributed as
FREEWARE, with Russian docs, for non-commercial work. Includes various
useful libraries for graphics, sound &etc. Follows the Forth-83
Standard. Phone: 7 095 288-2660. [VPF:93]

Pygmy Forth v1.4 is a small, 16-bit DOS Forth written by Frank Sergeant
that is modeled after Chuck Moore's cmFORTH for NOVIX. It is shareware
but there is no charge for registration. If you DO choose to register,
there is a Bonus Disk with goodies for ~$20. Complete with documented
source code, editor, assembler, and metacompiler.

MVP-FORTH, a Forth-79 from Mountain View Press, Inc. (MVP), is freely
available for different platforms. MVP also offer other commercial
Forth systems, information, and books.

TCOM v2.5 by Tom Zimmer is a 16-bit cross/metacompiler for DOS.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/tcom25.zip [SJB:950720]

F-PC v3.6 is a 16-bit Forth that is based on the Forth-83 standard but
includes numerous extensions. Very complete implementation.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/fpc36.zip
http://www.efn.org/~fwarren/fpc.html [SJB:950722]

hForth v0.9.5 by Wonyong Koh is an ANS Forth inspired by eForth. This
free beta release is ANS compliant, and all commented MASM source code
is included. There are three hForth models to choose from: A standard
EXE (for segmented memory machines), RAM (for any other RAM-only
system), and ROM (for small embedded systems). The author asserts that
it is very easy to optimize for any specific CPU.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/hf86v09.zip [SJB:950720]

wpforth v1.0 by Albert Chan is a prototype of a typographical programming
system built around WordPerfect v5.x and Pygmy Forth v1.4.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/wpforth.zip [SJB:950722]

The following are available in any SIMTEL mirror site:
4thcmp21.zip: Native code Forth compiler: COM, EXE, SYS, TSR, ROM
bbl_[ab].zip: Fast 16/32-bit Forth based on F83 -- needs work
zen1_10.zip: Forth with source to match ANS X3J14, BASIS 10
min4th25.zip: MiniForth system v2.5, with A86 source
uniforth.zip: Sampler of floating point Forth compiler
fig86.zip: Original Fig-86 Forth compiler [SJB:931030]

------------------------------

Subject: [3] 32-bit protected-mode PC Forth

Commercial:
Bradley Forthware sells Forthmacs for $250. Price includes source
and DOS extender.

FORTH, Inc.: polyFORTH. [see]

Harvard Softworks has a version of HS/FORTH that provides access to a
full, flat 4Gb of memory. [JVN:93]

LMI sell a 32-bit protected-mode Forth called 80386 UR/FORTH. It runs on
DOS and is based on the 'Phar Lap' DOS Extender. It is fully compatible
with XMS, EMS, and DPMI memory managers.

MPE ProForth for DOS, v2.0.

Offete has a protected-mode 32-bit eForth that comes with source code and
a public domain DOS extender.

bigFORTH by Bernd Paysan. [see]

Free:
eForth is available as a 32-bit port by Andy Valencia. [see also: 8]

FROTH is a free 32-bit Forth system, with source, available on Taygeta.

Gforth v0.1b is a GNU C-forth for Linux/DOS. [see also: 7, 8]

OOF is an object-oriented 32-bit Forth System written by Zsoter Andras.
It does not use a threaded paradigm, and generates native machine code.
Although many ANS Forth programs will run on OOF, it is not fully ANS
Forth compliant. All source is under the GNU General Public License.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/oof.zip [SJB:940722]

Ale Forth by Johns Lutz Sammer. Implements ANS Basis 17 wordset along
with lots of extensions. Supports subroutine threading, native code
generation and inline words.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/alefth.zoo [SJB:940722]

------------------------------

Subject: [4] Forth for Windows (3.1/NT/95)

Commercial:
Bradley Forthware Forthmacs is available for Windows 3.1 and costs $250.
It includes an emacs editor and comes complete with source.

LMI WinForth v1.01 is a 16-bit Forth for Windows 3.1 available from their
BBS for a $100 (US) fee.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/wfshr101.exe [SJB:940721]

MPE ProForth v1.420 for Windows 3.1x, NT, and Win95. A very complete
environment for Windows applications development.

FORTH, Inc., are agents in North America for MPE's ProForth for Windows.

Free:
Jax4th, a freeware 32-bit Forth for Windows NT complete with source code.
The current version features complete access to NT DLL's and BLOCK
loading facility. Written in MASM by Jack Woehr [see].
ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/forth/JX4NT106.ZIP [JJW:931021]

LMI WinForth. [see above]

Win32forth v1.20292 by Tom Zimmer and Andrew McKewan.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/win32for.zip [SJB:940721]

------------------------------

Subject: [5] Forth for OS/2

Commercial:
Forth/2 by Michael A. Warot [see] and Brian Mathewson [see] can be
licensed for commercial work. Talk to Brian if you have something to
add or you have any suggestions regarding Forth/2. Contact Michael if
you want to obtain a commercial license and/or source code.
ftp://ftp-os2.cdrom.com/pub/os2/2_x/program/forth025.zip
ftp://ftp-os2.nmsu.edu/os2/2_x/program/forth025.zip

Free:
Forth/2 by Michael A. Warot and Brian Mathewson is available by ftp
for non-commercial work. [see above]

------------------------------

Subject: [6] Forth for the 6811/68HC16

Commercial:
AM Research support their development boards with amrFORTH; a complete
cross-compiler system for the '68xx family.

FORTH, Inc.: chipFORTH. [see]

MPE Forth5 Cross Compiler.

New Micros, Inc., has Max-FORTH which is burned into the ROMs of their OEM
'6811 development boards. Max-FORTH uses a serial port to talk to the
outside world, and can be compiled to off-chip ram. [BL:931117]

Free:
various at ftp://asterix.inescn.pt/pub/forth/68hc11/
and ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Archive/68hc11/

------------------------------

Subject: [7] Forth written in C

Commercial:
Bradley Forthware C-Forth costs $100.

Free:
ThisForth v1.0.0.d is an ANS Forth written by Will Baden. You will need
M4 and an ANSI-C compiler to compile it. Binaries are available for a
number of architectures (CRAY, MIPS, SUN, SGI).
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/ANS/this4th.tar.gz [SJB:940720]

PFE (Portable Forth Environment) v0.9.14 is an ANS compatible Forth
implementation written in ANSI-C. All the code is under the GNU
General Public Licence. Binaries for various architectures available.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/ANS/pfe*.* [SJB:940720]

Gforth is a fast and portable implementation of the ANS Forth language. It
works nicely with the emacs editor, offers some nice features such as
input completion and history and a powerful locals facility, and it even
has (the beginnings of) a manual. Distributed under the GNU General
Public license. Gforth runs under UN*X and DOS and should not be hard
to port to other systems supported by GCC. Gforth-0.1beta has been
tested successfully on Linux (Intel), SunOS (SPARC) and Ultrix (MIPS).
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/
ftp://ftp.complang.tuwien.ac.at/pub/forth/gforth/

HENCE4TH v1.2 - A figForth written in C that currently runs under V7 Unix,
Personal C Compiler, and Mix Power C. Porting to other platforms should
be trivial, considering how vastly different these three are!
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/msdos/forth/ [KH:93]

C-Forth available from comp.sources.unix and also
ftp://asterix.inescn.pt/pub/forth/unix/c-forth.tar.z

TILEforth by Mikael Patel is a 32-bit Forth-83 written in C.

Until v2.5.1 is (almost) Forth-83 written in C. Its internals are
described in the book "Write Your Own Programming Language Using C++"
(ISBN# 1-55622-264-5) by Norman Smith <smi...@ORVB.SAIC.COM>. This
implementation was designed to call, and be called, by other C
functions; so it is ideal as a 'macro' language embedded in C/C++
applications. Comes with 175 pages of documentation.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/until251.zip [SJB:950720]

------------------------------

Subject: [8] Forth for UNIX

Commercial:
Bradley Forthware's Forthmacs. [see]

Free:

68K: An indirect threaded 32-bit Forth based on the 83 standard. Written
in 68K assembly (Motorola format) by Andy Valencia <van...@cisco.com>
ftp://asterix.inescn.pt/pub/forth/68000/forth-68000.tar.Z [SJB:94]

Forth-83: A UN*X port is available.
ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Archive/f83.tar.z

PDP-11: A version of figForth in PDP-11 assembler is available.
ftp://asterix.inescn.pt/pub/forth/others/pdp114th.zip [SJB:950718]

Linux/i386: An eForth v1.0 port (by Francois-Rene Rideau) to Linux on an
i386 architecture is based on the DJGPP/GO32 version by Andy Valencia.
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Reviewed/linux-eforth-1.0c.tar.gz
[SJB:950720]

eForth [see] has been also ported to Linux by Marcel Hendrix.

J. D. Verne

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comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions, part 6 of 6
Forth Groups & Organizations

Bradford J. Rodriguez, 7 Feb 1996

We are currently seeking a volunteer to maintain this FAQ. Please
contact Brad Rodriguez <b...@headwaters.com> if you're interested.

Please send additions, deletions, or changes to Brad Rodriguez
<b...@headwaters.com> in the meantime.

------------------------------

Subject: Table of Contents

[1] Forth Organizations
[2] FIG Chapters
[3] Forth Conferences

NOTE: this FAQ is in the early stages of construction. Contributions
and suggestions are welcome.

------------------------------

Subject: [1] Forth Organizations

Forth Interest Group (FIG)
P.O. Box 2154
Oakland, CA 94621 USA
telephone: 510-893-6784 (510-89-FORTH)
fax: 510-535-1295
e-mail: john...@aol.com
<http://www.forth.org/fig.html>
Membership in FIG is US$40 per year (before March 1st), plus an
additional US$15 per year for foreign members. This includes a
subscription to the bimonthly magazine Forth Dimensions. FIG holds
the annual FORML conference.

FIG-UK
The UK Chapter of the Forth Interest Group publishes its own
Forthwrite magazine 6 times a year, maintains an extensive lending
library of books and periodicals (including Forth Dimensions, JOFAR
and FORML) with a number of items on disk too.

Meetings with invited speakers are held 4 times a year at the South
Bank University, London.

To join (at only 10 pounds a year, you can't afford not to :-)
contact Doug Neale on 0181 542 2747 or by post to:
58 Woodland Way
MORDEN
Surrey
SM4 4DS

Institute for Applied Forth Research
70 Elmwood Avenue
Rochester, NY 14611 USA
telephone 716-235-0168
email: lfor...@jwk.com
Publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Forth Application and
Research, and holds the annual Rochester Forth Conference.

Association for Computing Machinery (SIGForth)
ACM's Special Interest Group on Forth has been absorbed into ACM
SIGPlan, the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages.

------------------------------

Subject: [2] FIG Chapters

[This section is under revision. If you have information about an
active FIG chapter, please send it to the FAQ maintainer.]

CALIFORNIA
North Bay Chapter
Meets monthly, 2nd Sat., at BMUG, 2055 Center Street, Berkeley (1/2
block from Berkeley BART station). Tutorial at noon, meeting at 1
pm. Contact Leonard Morgenstern, 510-376-5241, <nleo...@aol.com>.

CANADA
Southern Ontario Chapter
Meets quarterly, 1st Sat. of March/June/Dec., 2nd Sat. of Sept.,
2 pm, at McMaster University, General Science Building, Rm. 301,
Hamilton, Ontario. Contact Dr. N. Solntseff, 905-525-9140 x.23443,
<n...@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>. Maintains software library.

UNITED KINGDOM
see "FIG-UK" listing under "[1] Forth Organizations"

------------------------------

Subject: [3] Forth Conferences

Rochester Forth Conference
The Rochester Forth Conference is held in (or near) the Eastern U.S.
every June. This year's conference, the 16th annual, will be held
from June 19-22 at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada. The conference theme is "Open Systems" and papers
are being solicited. Direct inquiries to the Program Chair, Nicholas
Solntseff, <n...@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>.
WWW page: <http://maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca/~ns/96roch.html>

EuroForth Conference
The EuroForth Conference is held in various European countries,
usually in late October or early November. The 1996 conference is
scheduled to be held October 4-7 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

FORML Conference
The FORML Conference is held at the Asilomar Conference Center in
California every November.

Other Forth conferences have been held in Australia and China.

J. D. Verne

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comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions, part 5 of 6
Books, Periodicals, and Tutorials

Chris Jakeman, 28 July 1996

Changes since the previous posting are marked with a "|".
Please send your updates, comments or suggestions to me
at cjak...@apvpeter.demon.co.uk.

------------------------------

Subject: Table of Contents

[1] Periodicals
[2] Standards Documents
[3] Books - Organisation
[4] Books - Tutorial
[5] Books - Advanced
[6] Books - Related
[7] Suppliers
[8] Indexes

------------------------------

Subject: [1] Periodicals

Forth Dimensions (ISSN 0884-0822)
Published 6 issues/year to members; Marlin Ouverson, editor
<ouve...@aol.com>. Subscriptions are US$40/year (before March 1,
1996), plus US$15/year for foreign subscriptions. Forth Interest
Group, P.O. Box 2154, Oakland, CA 94621 USA, 'phone 510-893-6784,
fax 510-535-1295. Advertising sales: 'phone 805-946-2272.

Brad Rodriguez <b...@headwaters.com> writes:
Forth Dimensions is the official publication of the Forth Interest
Group, and is probably the foremost journal devoted exclusively to the
Forth language. It is in its 17th year of publication.

FORML and euroForth Conference Proceedings
Published annually by FIG at $40; Robert Reiling, director <??@??.??>.
FORML is an educational forum for sharing and discussing new or
unproved proposals intended to benefit Forth. The first conference
was held in 1980 and euroForth conferences began in 1992. FIG (above)
published an index for these.

Rochester Forth Conference
Published annually by the Institute for Applied Research at $25 to
$35 (depending on year); Larry Forsley, director <lfor...@jwk.com>.
The conference covers all topics of Forth implementation and
application. Conferences began in 1981.
See http://maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca/~ns/96roch.html for this year.

Does anyone have information about:
- conferences in Australia, China etc.?
- "More on Forth Engines" Dr.C.H.Ting, Editor?

Journal of Forth Application and Research (ISSN 0738-2022)
Published nominally 4 issues/year; Len Zettel, editor
<zet...@acm.org>. Journal of Forth Application and Research, 70
Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, NY 14611 USA, telephone 716-235-0168.

Brad Rodriguez <b...@headwaters.com> writes:
JFAR is the only peer-reviewed Forth journal. It is currently being
revived after a long hiatus; the last issue was published in 1994.
Len Zettel has assumed the post of editor, and is soliciting
contributions to the Journal.

The Computer Journal
Published 6 issues/year; Dave Baldwin, editor <dib...@netcom.com>.
Subscriptions are US$24/year in U.S., US$34/year Canada/Mexico (air
mail), US$44/year foreign (air mail). The Computer Journal, P.O. Box
3900, Citrus Heights, CA 95611-3900 USA, telephone 916-722-4970, fax
916-722-7480, email t...@psyber.com, <http://www.psyber.com/~tcj>.

Brad Rodriguez <b...@headwaters.com> writes:
The Computer Journal is not a Forth magazine; it is devoted to
"classic", small, and non-mainstream computers. It frequently carries
articles about the Forth language.

Some national FIG groups publish their own periodicals, eg FIG UK and
Forth-Gesellschaft e.V. See the FAQ: groups - part 6/6 for details.

------------------------------

Subject: [2] Standards Documents

For details of the Forth standards see the FAQ: general - part 1/6.

Published standards since 1978 are Forth 79 and Forth 83 from the Forth

Standards Team, ANS Forth - document X3.215-1994 - by the X3J14
Technical Committee and the Open Boot Standard.

The most recent standard, ANS Forth, defines a set of core words and
some optional extensions and takes care to allow great freedom in how
these words are implemented. The range of hardware which can support an

ANS Forth Standard System is wider than any previous Forth standard and
probably wider than any programming language standard ever. The
document includes 90 pages of annexes, providing an insight into the
decisions which had to be taken in drafting ANS Forth.

Copies of the standard cost $193 from the American National Standards
Institute Sales Department (212) 642-4900, but the final draft of ANS
Forth is free and available (subject to copyright restrictions) at:
ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/dpans94.zip (Word For Windows, v2)
ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/dpans94.hqx (Word For Macintosh)
ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Literature/dpans94a.zip (plain ASCII)

The Open Boot Standard defines the use of Forth to configure the
hardware attached to a computer at startup. It is a token-threaded,
open standard closely modelled on ANS Forth used by Sun, IBM, Motorola
and Apple.

IEEE Std 1275-1994 is recognised as an American National Standard:
"IEEE Standard for Boot (Initialization Configuration) Firmware:
Core Requirements and Practices, 262p, ISBN 1-55937-426-8, about $60
from IEEE Computer Society, email stds...@ieee.org.

------------------------------

Subject: [3] Books - Organisation

There is not space here to provide an abstract to every book on Forth.
Instead this is a guide to those items which Forth users have found
most helpful, together with a list of other Forth books. If you have
been especially helped by a book, please write me an abstract for it.

Where publications are not widely available, a supplier is listed.
Approximate prices are given as a guide.

------------------------------

Subject: [4] Books - Tutorial

"Starting FORTH: an introduction to the FORTH language and operating
system for beginners and professionals" Leo Brodie, Prentice Hall 1981
(2nd Ed., 1987), 346 pages, ISBN 0-13-842922-7, price $29.

Chris Jakeman <cjak...@apvpeter.demon.co.uk> writes:
This is the classic introduction to Forth, with helpful cartoons,
exercises and solutions. See also Brodie's "Thinking Forth" below.

"The Forth Course" Richard Haskell, 156 pages with disk, price $25,
supplier FIG.

FIG writes:
This set of 11 lessons is designed to make it easy for you to learn
Forth. The material was developed over several years of teaching
Forth as part of a senior/graduate course in desing of embedded
software computer systems at Oakland Univeristy in Rochester,
Michigan.

"FORTH: A Text And Reference" Mahon Kelly and Nick Spies,
Prentice-Hall, 1986, 487pps ISBN 0-13-326331-2 and in hardcover
0-13-326349-5, $19 and $25 from MMS below.

Dick Miller <DMi...@im.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
Very readable, covers beginner level through relatively advanced,
including Assembler and 8087 math co-processor details, particularly
appropriate to IBM PC and MMSFORTH, but very strong for general use
as well. The only college-level Forth textbook, complete with
exercises and answers.

"Forth Applications In Engineering And Industry" John Matthews,
Ellis Horwood, 1989 ISBN 0-85312-659-3, price UKP35.
Currently out of print, this book may be available from libraries.

MPE Ltd. <Sa...@mpeltd.demon.co.uk> writes:
If you are starting out in the field of real-time control of hardware
using Forth, then this book is for you! This text covers most
aspects of real-time control under Forth, from the very basics of
what Forth is, through to control loops and digital implementations
of analogue filters.

"Embedded Controller FORTH for the 8051 family" William H. Payne,
Academic Press, 1990, 511 pages with DOS disks, ISBN 0125475705,
price $72 book, $20 disk.

J. Fulcher, Computing Reviews, 9105-0316 writes:
... This hobbyist-style book goes into considerable detail regarding
the implementation of FORTH on the i8051 family of microcontrollers
(down to circuit diagrams, PCB layouts, and wire-wrap board
schematics) ... Almost two-thirds of this book is devoted to
appendices -- 19 in all. These primarily contain code listings ...

Paul Frenger, SIGFORTH, 2(4):31-32, 1990 reviews the book and gives
it 10/10. Notes that the book contains everything you need: all the
source is there as well as all the circuit diagrams. There are 19
appendices, which make up half of the book, and contain things like:
the source to the 8086 Forth, 8051 Forth, full screen editor code,
8051 disassembler code, Nautilus metacompiler, 8086/8051
meta-assemblers, Forth decompilers and much more.

See also the FAQ: on-line - part 2/6, for tutorials and Forth systems to
try them on.

Other titles are:
90, Zech, Forth for Professionals, Ellis Horwood, 0-13-327040-8
88, Tracy, Mastering Forth
87, Henric-Coll, La Practique du Forth avec Hector I
85, Bishop, Exploring Forth, Prentice-Hall, 0-246-12188-2
85, Burnap, Forth, The Fourth-Generation Language
85, Olney and Benson, Fundamental Forth, Pan Books
85, Salman, Forth
84, Anderson, Mastering Forth, Bowie (yes, same title as Tracy above :)
84, Armstrong, Learning Forth
84, Chirlian, Beginning Forth
84, Lampton, Forth for Beginners
84, Oakley, Forth For Micros, Newnes Technical Books, 0-408-01366-4
83, de Grandis-Harrison, Forth on the BBC Microcomputer, 0-907876-06-4
83, McCade, Forth Fundamentals, Matrix
83, Winfield, The Complete Forth, Sigma Technical Press, 0-905104-22-6
82, Hogan, Discover Forth, Osborne
82, Scanlon, Forth Programming, Sams
81, Katzan, Invitation to Forth, Petrocelli Books
81, Knecht, Introduction To Forth, Sams
Hendtlass, Real-Time Forth (on-line only http://www.forth.org/fig.html)
Pitman, Pocket Guide to Forth

MVP-Forth Series
1 - All About Forth, '90, Haydon
2 - MVP Forth source listings, '83?, Haydon & Kuntz
3 - Integer and Floating Point, '83, Koopman
4 - Expert System, '84, Park
5 - File Management System, '84, Moreton
6 - Expert Tutorial, '84, Derick
7 - Forth Guide, '85, Haydon
8 - IBM Professional Application Development System, '85, Wempe
9 - Word Processor And Calculator, Programmers Guide, '85, Wempe
10 - Word Processor And Calculator, File & Print source, '85, Wempe

------------------------------

Subject: [5] Books - Advanced

"Scientific FORTH: a modern language for scientific computing"
Julian V. Noble, Mechum Banks Publishing, 19??, 300 pages,
ISBN 0-9632775-0-2, price $50.

Julian V. Noble <j...@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> writes:
While not intended for the Forth novice, Scientific FORTH contains a
good many serious examples of Forth programming style, useful programs,
as well as innovations intended to simplify number crunching in Forth.
It can now be found in the libraries of several major universities
(e.g. Yale, U. of Chicago and Rockefeller U.) and government and
industrial laboratories (e.g. Fermilab and Motorola). It comes with a
disk containing all the programs discussed in the book. An update
file has recently been posted to GEnie/FIG.

"Thinking FORTH" Leo Brodie, Prentice Hall, 1984, ??? pages,
ISBN: 0-13-917576-8 and 0-13-917568-7 (pbk.), price $20.

Dick Miller <dmi...@im.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
This is a top-notch book on strategy, and always was our [MMS] top
recommendation for the SECOND book, after you bought a textbook to
learn the Forth words. This one teaches you which ones to select
when, how to hone your habits for better Forth (and other)
programming, etc. It's been unavailable for a year or two, and has
been reprinted at last! MMS has worked to reduce its price from a
proposed $40 (in paperback), and is pleased to offer it at $19.95.

"Forth: The Next Step" Ron Geere, Addison-Wesley, 1986, 89 pages,
ISBN 0-201-18050-2, price ??.

Stephen J. Bevan <be...@cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
As the title might suggest, this is not for the complete beginner.
It is aimed at those who have mastered the idea of reverse polish
... etc. and now want to do something a bit more complicated.
Covers areas like: using double length numbers, formatting,
reading/writing values from/to a port and `infinite' precision
integers.

"Object-oriented Forth - Implementation of Data Structures" Dick Pountain
Academic Press, 1987, 108 pages, ISBN 0-12-563570-2, price $35.

Chris Jakeman <cjak...@demon.co.uk> writes:
Pountain <di...@bix.com> is a Byte contributing editor. His "book
sets out to develop systematic ways of constructing complex data
structures in Forth ... with a few easy to use syntax extensions to
the language." Efficient techniques for records and arrays are
presented and refined with great clarity. Objects are built from
these by adding methods with a small change to the dictionary
structure. The techniques are demonstrated using lists, a heap and
a dynamic simulation of queuing at the bank.

"Forth: The New Model - A Programmer's Handbook" Jack Woehr,
M&T Publishing, 1992, 315 pages, ISBN: 0-13-036328-6, DOS disk included,
price $45.

Describes features of ANS Forth and how to use it to write portable
Forth programs. Published 2 years before the Standard was approved,
it predicts the Standard very closely. Currently the only book about
ANS Forth.

Ong Hian Leong <sco...@solomon.technet.sg> writes:
The author is (as at time of print) VP of Forth Interest Group and
member of X3J14, so he presumably knows what he's talking about. 8-)

Other titles are:
87, Dr.Dobb's Toolbook of Forth, Vols I & II, M&T Publishing
86, Reynolds, Advanced Forth, Sigma
86, Terry, Library of Forth Routines and Utilities
85, Olney and Benson, Forth Techniques, Pan Books, 0-330-28961-6
85, Roberts, Forth Applications, ELCOMP Publishing, 3-88963-061-8
84, Feierbach, Forth Tools and Applications, Reston
81, Loeliger, Threaded Interpretive Languages, Byte Books, 0-07-038360-x
-----------------------------

Subject: [6] Books - Related

"The Evolution Of FORTH - An Unusual Language" C.H.Moore, Byte,
Aug. 1980.

Forth's history by its creator.

"The Evolution of Forth" E.D.Rather, D.R.Colburn, C.H.Moore,
ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, No.3 March 1993, 46 pages.

An larger and more recent history of Forth by the early pioneers.
This is also available on the Forth Inc. home page at
http://home.earthlink.net/~forth

"Stack Computers: The New Wave" Phillip Koopman, John Wiley & Sons, 1989,
ISBN 0-470-21467-8, price $82.

Stephen J. Bevan <be...@cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
This isn't a book about Forth, rather it is about computers that
potentially execute Forth very efficiently. The book contains a
detailed overview of a number of Forth chips as well as a potted
history of what seems to be every stack-based computer ever
designed.

Paul Frenger, SIGFORTH, 1(3):28-29, 1989 writes:
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who programs in
Forth or any other high level language of whatever variety, or who
is interested in the hardware details of Forth engines or the
pitfalls of conventional CPU design.

| The author <koo...@cs.cmu.edu> reports (July 96):
| My stack computer architecture book has recently gone out of print,
| but I still receive occasional inquiries as to availability. The
| former publisher, Ellis Horwood Ltd., has graciously returned the
| copyright ownership to me. So, I have decided to place the book
| on-line at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/index.html
|
| The book contains, among other things, case studies of seven late-80's
| stack computers. Perhaps there is renewed relevance with Java (and,
| perhaps not -- that question has already been debated at length).
| The book is still copyrighted, but is readable in its entirety from
| the above URL (see the copyright statement at that URL for details).
|
| I don't have time, and there doesn't seem to be market demand at this
| point, for a revised edition. However, if you e-mail me pointers to
| web sites that describe newer stack computer information, I will
| consider putting them in the on-line supplement as time permits.

"Write Your Own Programming Language Using C++" Norman Smith,
Wordware Publishing, Plano, Texas. 108 pages, DOS disk included,
ISBN 1-55622-264-5, price: $15.

Norman E. Smith <smi...@orvb.saic.com> writes:
This book presents a minimal Forth implementation called Until, for
UNconventional Threaded Interpretive Language. Until is designed
to be used as a macro language embedded in other applications. It
can both call and be called by other C functions.

Chris Jakeman <cjak...@apvpeter.demon.co.uk> writes:
Continued development has enhanced Until since this publication.
For details of the latest public version, see FAQ: system - part 4/6.

------------------------------

Subject: [7] Suppliers

Brad Rodriguez <b...@headwaters.com> writes:
Most of these books and conference proceedings are available from the
Forth Interest Group, P.O. Box 2154, Oakland, CA 94621 USA,
telephone 510-893-6784, fax 510-535-1295.

Other suppliers include:
FORTH Inc. - email to forth...@forth.com
Miller Microcomputer Services (MMS) - email to dmi...@im.lcs.mit.edu
Mountain View Press (MVP) - email to ??
Box 429, Star Route 2 La Honda, CA 94020
and, in the UK,
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd.(MPE) - email to m...@mpeltd.demon.co.uk

Why not call them for a complete list of their Forth publications?

------------------------------

Indexes: [8] Indexes

Currently there is no comprehensive on-line index to books or published
papers about Forth. FIG supplies a printed index of FORML and euroForml
papers.

http://www.bookshop.co.uk/SEARCH.HTM finds 45 books but omits some
important ones like Scientific Forth.

http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Compiler/forth.html is part of
the Computer Science Bibliography Collection at the University Of
Karlsruhe and 13 mirror sites around the world. It contains 668
references to published papers, mostly proceedings of euroForth
conferences. See also http://www.paisley.ac.uk/~cis/forth/index.html

J. D. Verne

unread,

Oct 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM10/2/96

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From: f...@forth.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Followup-To: comp.lang.forth
Subject: comp.lang.forth FAQ: online (1 Apr 1996), part 2/6
Reply-To: fo...@artopro.mlnet.com

Archive-name: forth/FAQ/online
Comp-lang-forth-archive-name: online-faq
Last-modified: 1 Apr 1996
Version: 1.00
Posting-Frequency: monthly

Send additions, deletions, or changes to
Kenneth O'Heskin <fo...@artopro.mlnet.com>

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David N. Williams
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Dwight Elvey
ftp://hal.com/pub/elvey

Fare's FTP site, FORTH subsection
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Hewlett Packard
ftp://col.hp.com/mirrors/Forth

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Microtronix
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Robert Jay Brown
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--FTP/Web Sites--
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Ron's Mac and Apple II archive
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Skip Carter's Forth Page
http://www.forth.org/forth.html

The Mops Page
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Miller Microcomputer Services
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PYGMY Forth - Frank Sergeant
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The Forth Online Resources Survey
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--Newsgroups, Conferences, et. al--
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CompuServe Forth Forum
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GEnie Information Services (GEIS)
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--World Wide Web--
1996 Rochester Conference
http://maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca/~ns/96roch.htmlx

Alaric B. Williams
http://www.hardcafe.co.uk/Alaric/os.htm

ATLAST
http://www.fourmilab.ch

Bernd Paysan's Web site
http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/cgi-bin/nph-gateway/hphalle2/~paysan/

Cimprovisor
http://www.asi.bc.ca/asi/affiliates/cimprovisor/cimhome.html

euroFORTH
http://www.paisley.ac.uk/~cis/euro

FIG home page
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Forth Bibliography (Mirrored)
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FORTH, Inc. Home Page
http://www.earthlink.net/~forth

F-PC Homepage
http://www.efn.org/~fwarren/fpc.html

Frank Sergeant
http://www.eskimo.com/~pygmy

Immersive Systems, Inc.
http://www.immersive.com

Internet Hot List List - Forth
http://www.cera.com/forth.htm

Jeff Fox's Home Page
http://www.dnai.com/~jfox

Jumbo
http://www.jumbo.com/prog/dos/forth/

Laboratory Microsystems Inc.
http://www.cerfnet.com/~lmi

Learning Forth Page
http://sherman.pas.rochester.edu/Forth/forth.html

Leo Brodie Services
http://www.pacificrim.net/~lbrodie/lbs.html

New Micros Inc
http://www.newmicros.com/systems

Nick Francesco's Forth Page
http://raptor.rit.edu/Nick/forth.htm

Open FirmWare
http://www.firmworks.com

Paisley Forth Page
http://www.paisley.ac.uk/~cis/forth/index.html

Patriot Scientific Corporation
http://www.ptsc.com

Phil Koopman's Forth Mini-Page
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~koopman

Pocket Forth Home Page
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/pocket.html

Roger Ivie
http://cc.usu.edu/~ivie/

The Computer Journal
http://www.psyber.com/~tcj/

The TUNES project
http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/rideau/Tunes/

Tom Almy - ForthCMP
http://www.teleport.com/~almy

Tout sur le Forth en France
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WebBook
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>From Forth Dimensions XVII No.4 Nov/Dec 1995

=================================
current FIG address/contact info:
=================================
Forth Interest Group
P.O. Box 2154
Oakland, California 94621

telephone: 510-893-6784
fax: 510-535-1295
e-mail: off...@forth.org
Forth Interest Group home page:
http://www.forth.org/fig.html

altavoz

unread,

Nov 5, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/5/96

to

J. D. Verne wrote:
>
> Posted-By: auto-faq 3.3 beta (Perl 5.001)
> Archive-name: computer-lang/forth-faq/part1
> Posting-Frequency: Monthly. A how-to-find-the-FAQ article is posted weekly.
>
> comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions (1/6): Gen-
> eral/Misc
> M. Anton Ertl, an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
>

altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
people who supposedly DEFEND it.

To save F' we need to put a "user shell" around it so novices
can use it . the shell would force them to do things in an
efficient manner . Because , as we all know F' allows you
so much freedom , you take too long to learn it.
Now here comes the FLAMER FORTH FANATICS saying " if you're
not an expert , dont use F' .
We're talking ease of use and learning , even for a expert
programmer , F' gives you so much freedom , the learning curve
is too long .

The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.
Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?
Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that
and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!

I have never talked to an open minded FORTH programmer .

______End of text from altavoz___________

Tom Zimmer

unread,

Nov 5, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/5/96

to

altavoz wrote:

>
> J. D. Verne wrote:
> >
> > Posted-By: auto-faq 3.3 beta (Perl 5.001)
> > Archive-name: computer-lang/forth-faq/part1
> > Posting-Frequency: Monthly. A how-to-find-the-FAQ article is posted weekly.
> >
> > comp.lang.forth Frequently Asked Questions (1/6): Gen-
> > eral/Misc
> > M. Anton Ertl, an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
> >
>

> altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
> people who supposedly DEFEND it.
>
> To save F' we need to put a "user shell" around it so novices
> can use it . the shell would force them to do things in an
> efficient manner . Because , as we all know F' allows you
> so much freedom , you take too long to learn it.
> Now here comes the FLAMER FORTH FANATICS saying " if you're
> not an expert , dont use F' .
> We're talking ease of use and learning , even for a expert
> programmer , F' gives you so much freedom , the learning curve
> is too long .
>
> The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.
> Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
> make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?
> Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that
> and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!
>
> I have never talked to an open minded FORTH programmer .

Did you want a response, or were you just venting?

Open Minded

Emmanuel Baechler

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

> altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
> people who supposedly DEFEND it.

Forht is not popular as it was before, especially in the PC
world. But it is not (yet?) dead. There are still many devices
(watches, PDAs, washing machines, satellites, and so on.)
where it is very useful.

It is however striking to notice that all books on Forth have
been published in the eighties (or earlier). This is the sign
of a very serious trouble.

> The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.

Having an inner interpreter gives Forth an impressive flexibility.
Other languages with such a flexibility, like Common Lisp, have
an inner interpreter too (even if they also have an incremental
compiler).

IMO, a very important factor of the decrease of popularity of Forth
in the PC world, is that, for a very long time there was no (or very
few) Windows developpment environnments. Win32Forth is an impressive
effort in this direction. Thanks a lot to its authors!

Currently, most PC applications are 80% user interface and 20% "real"
program. The easier the devloppment of the user interface is, the easier
it is to develop new applications. This is what explains the success of
tools like Visual basic, despite the crudeness of the language. I suspect
that it is very important for the Forth Community to create one (or several)
affordable Visual Forth packages.

Emmanuel Baechler
Chemin du Stade 4
1007 Lausanne
Switzerland

Hans Bezemer

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

altavoz <alt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
>people who supposedly DEFEND it.

Not only is it stupid and narrow-minded to assume all Forthers are "stupid and
narrowminded", it is also logically incorrect. Not the right attitude for a
programmer.

>To save F' we need to put a "user shell" around it so novices
>can use it . the shell would force them to do things in an
>efficient manner . Because , as we all know F' allows you
>so much freedom , you take too long to learn it.

I partly agree. First, you can say the same thing about C. There are hardly any
programs that compile without warning and virtually none that can succesfully
go through a lint. Second, most languages are available in a form that enables
a novice to "get the hang of it" (e.g. C-interpreters). It is true that
constructs like CREATE can be used in so many (different) forms in so many
(different) implementations that it can be hard to get the hang of it.

> Now here comes the FLAMER FORTH FANATICS saying " if you're
>not an expert , dont use F' .

Same applies to C or ASM. If your screen freezes, there was an error.

> We're talking ease of use and learning , even for a expert
>programmer , F' gives you so much freedom , the learning curve
>is too long .

I've written 4tH. 4tH is a conventional compiler using the Forth language. The
use of words is well-defined and it CAN'T bomb out. It gives relevant error
messages. In my opinion it takes the heat out of Forth. When mastered, goto
Forth. Instead of writing shells, try this one. It is free. 4tH code can
usually be ported to Forth.

>The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.

>Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
>make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?
> Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that
>and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!

This makes it very hard to take you seriously. ASM is *NOT* easy to master and
gives you even more freedom than Forth. Speed and userfriendliness are hard to
combine. What the heck are you looking for? Even C is not as fast as ASM code.

>I have never talked to an open minded FORTH programmer .

Try this one. I've programmed in more languages than you can imagine for over
fifteen years, and love both C and Forth. I think Forth does have its
drawbacks, and I've discussed that issue here over and over again. Not
everybody agrees and some even wonder what I'm talking about since I'm not part
of the "Forth culture". Still, there is genius in the Forth concept and like
every tool it can do miracles in the hand of a master. Throwing it in the
garbage can after some bad sessions is throwing away valuable ideas. If Forth
is such a hassle why bother? Why venting it here? Forth is so easy to build,
build one yourself (in ASM ;) ) and (im)prove your point. I did.

Hans

Simon Read

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

altavoz <alt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>altavoz: FORTH is dead stupid, narrow minded
>force take too long FLAMER FORTH FANATICS too long .
>
> stupid big mistake. 1/3 as fast
>I have never open minded

There, there, I understand. Lie down and tell me all about it.

Yours sympathetically,
Simon

T.W.Wor...@ncl.ac.uk

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

altavoz <alt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>J. D. Verne wrote:
>>

>> Posted-By: auto-faq 3.3 beta (Perl 5.001)

<snip>

>altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
>people who supposedly DEFEND it.
>

>To save F' we need to put a "user shell" around it so novices
>can use it . the shell would force them to do things in an
>efficient manner

What, like blocks did, but no one likes them. Like encapsulating your
code into words, but people still write 90 line words with duplicate code
in them. Like the ability to extend the compiler, but no one documents
their changes? Seems like the problem is on THIS side of the keyboard.
That probably explains why people who write crap Forth also write crap C.

> . Because , as we all know F' allows you
>so much freedom , you take too long to learn it.

Anyone, even a non programmer can learn Forth in a day. I have never seen
an easier language to learn. I really can't see how anyone makes the
connection between freedom and learning difficulty; the opposite is the
case. C++ is a pain to learn because of all the rules.

> Now here comes the FLAMER FORTH FANATICS saying " if you're
>not an expert , dont use F' .

I agree that's an idiotic thing to say, although this is the first time
I've seen it.

> We're talking ease of use and learning , even for a expert
>programmer , F' gives you so much freedom , the learning curve
>is too long .

No matter how thin you slice this idea it's still vegitarian hotpot.

>The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.
>Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
>make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?

`I don't like this compiler, so the language is no good'? Grow up.

> Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that
>and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!

No high level language runs 'at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE' so
are you saying that you are an assembler programmer exclusivly? In that
case Forth is just the thing for you, you can use the built in assembler
for the main bits and the Forth words for front end, control structures
etc, sounds like heaven for a programmer like yourself!

>
>
>I have never talked to an open minded FORTH programmer .

The words of an open-minded progtammer there, folks. Death to ALL
fanatics!

>
>
>______End of text from altavoz___________

And good night.

Thomas Worthington

Dan Hogan

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

This 'altavoz' is some joker(s) trolling for flames and
arguments. He has posted simular CON arguments, posing as
an "eggspert," on rec.amatuer.radio.*, rec.boats, and now
here. He's on my kill list where ever I find him. Nuff
said.

Rob Nicholson

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

<< No high level language runs 'at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE >>

It's getting to the stage now where compilers are starting to produce
more efficient code than writing directly in assembler. Multi-scaler,
multi-pipelined, out-of-order execution is a real nightmare to get your
head around. Maybe I should have said within a reasonable time :-) I'm
sure a real assembler hacker could out perform a compiler but it's going
to take ages.

Hmm, on this track, how does Forth stand up in the multi-processor,
pipelined, delayed branches, out-of-order execution kind of world? Other
compilers can look at a block of code as a whole a re-arrange it to
their hearts content. Pretty tricky in Forth I'd guess.

Regards, Rob.

Tom Almy

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

In article <327F8D...@worldnet.att.net>,

altavoz <alt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.
>Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
>make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?

It makes implementation and porting much faster, and it's a well respected
approach -- JAVA does it, for instance.

> Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that

>and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!

Well, there are still some inefficiencies. "Run at the same speed, give or take
a few percent, of C" I'd buy. In fact I've been compiling Forth into
machine language for 14 years with excellent results.

Tom Almy

Bernd Paysan

unread,

Nov 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/6/96

to

Rob Nicholson wrote:
> Hmm, on this track, how does Forth stand up in the multi-processor,
> pipelined, delayed branches, out-of-order execution kind of world? Other
> compilers can look at a block of code as a whole a re-arrange it to
> their hearts content. Pretty tricky in Forth I'd guess.

Anton Ertl's RAFTS shows how to transform FORTH into a standard form of
intermediate code (RTL) that is used by many (if not all) state of the
art compilers. This code can be scheduled like C or any other language.
Inlining is possible (and easy), so the call/return frequency can be
reduced to an amount suitable to modern pipelined processors. Because
Forth provides a way to return multiple variables, a number of
scheduling problems with C disappear (you must pass parameters through
memory!). Still, Fortran programs will sometimes compile to faster code
(especially those apps Fortran is made for), because in Forth, as in C,
the compiler often doesn't know if addresses are aliased.

--
Bernd Paysan
"Late answers are wrong answers!"
http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~paysan/

CRepublic

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

>IMO, a very important factor of the decrease of popularity of Forth
>in the PC world, is that, for a very long time there was no (or very
>few) Windows developpment environnments. Win32Forth is an impressive
>effort in this direction. Thanks a lot to its authors!
>
>Currently, most PC applications are 80% user interface and 20% "real"
>program. The easier the devloppment of the user interface is, the easier
>it is to develop new applications. This is what explains the success of
>tools like Visual basic, despite the crudeness of the language. I suspect

>that it is very important for the Forth Community to create one (or
several)
>affordable Visual Forth packages.

Well said. Oh, well said.
The only coment I can add is that forth is a nateral language for
reinventing the wheel. At this point it is almost simpler to write a new
word to do a given thing then to find the word that allreddy does it.

LgL...@aol.com

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

In article <3281c24a...@netnews.lightside.com>, dhh...@lightside.com
(Dan Hogan) writes:

>This 'altavoz' is some joker(s) trolling for flames and
>arguments. He has posted simular CON arguments, posing as
>an "eggspert," on rec.amatuer.radio.*, rec.boats, and now
>here. He's on my kill list where ever I find him. Nuff
>said.

Hmm,

I had just about come to this conclusion. I even came up with a name
for this behaviour. The salamander of of mythology was a creature that
lived on/in fire. Hence, someone who's main function on the net is to
provoke flames is a salamander. Or, perhaps a cyber-salamander, or a
cybermander?

L. Greg Lisle, PE

Tony Williams

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

In article <327F8D...@worldnet.att.net>, altavoz

<URL:mailto:alt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
> I have never talked to an open minded FORTH programmer .
>

Yes you have, we spoke in sci.electronics.design the other
day and I'm a professional Forth programmer who is as
open-minded as you can get.

In fact, I'm not a Forth Compiler, just a self-taught Forth
User and from that angle, IMNSHO, probably quite qualified
to answer some of your points. So here goes:-

> altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
> people who supposedly DEFEND it.

Is Forth dead? I would disagree, it is certainly not very
visible but some of the places it pops up can be quite
surprising. If Forth is good enough for SUN it's good
enough for me. I believe there is a site somewhere that
lists some of the unusually respectable users of Forth.

Perhaps someone can put up the URL for you to visit.

I would agree, with some disappointment, that Forth has
remained a minor programming language, as opposed to C say,
and cannot offer an opinion as to why this happened, but
would certainly not point fingers at just one group.

In fact though, why should anyone have any obligation
to promote and defend Forth? If you have a particular
Religous Belief you can hug it to yourself and gloat
over the fact the rest of the peasants are still in the
dark ages, or you can go out and proselytise it.
It's up to the individual, there's no bye-law AFAIK.

A lot of us do try to promote Forth in the wider world, as
evidenced by that post of mine in sci.electronics.design
the other day, and you started to add some nice support.

Regrettably however, in the same post you took the
opportunity to slag-off some aspects of Forth that you
object to and that did tend to divert from the Forth
promotion that was going on. So there is an instance of
where *your* unthinking narrow mindedness detracted from
else's DEFENCE of Forth.

>
> To save F' we need to put a "user shell" around it so novices
> can use it . the shell would force them to do things in an

> efficient manner . Because , as we all know F' allows you

> so much freedom , you take too long to learn it.

> Now here comes the FLAMER FORTH FANATICS saying " if you're
> not an expert , dont use F' .

> We're talking ease of use and learning , even for a expert
> programmer , F' gives you so much freedom , the learning curve
> is too long .
>

Agree and disagree with some of those statements...

I learned to use Forth, unaided, when it was the old FIG
model. Yes, it does have an initial steep learning curve
as you try to get your head around a new way of thinking.

No, a "user-shell" would not seem a productive thing to do
as it would hide important things that you can experiment
with as your knowledge grows.

As a "lean-meaner" I would agree that some of the later
Fat Forths make life difficult for the beginner, in fact
they daunt even me, after about 15 years with Forth.

The best Forth to learn on is one where the Core has only
the classic basics in it and the extra clever bits get
optionally loaded from Source Code as you progress.
This allows for Modular Learning and still makes the
full power of the language available as the student
gets deeper into it. That changes the slope of the
learning curve into small steps.

FLAME ON

"If you're not an expert, don't use F' ." ..... Bollocks.

FLAME OFF.

> The stupid coded inner interpreter is another big mistake.
> Why do i want my s/w to run 1/3 as fast as asm code just to
> make some traditional thinking F' author happy ?

> Well, you can write a "post compiler" to get around that
> and run F' at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE !!
>

Inner Interpreters can be Direct, Indirect, JSR/RTS, CALL/RETURN,
or whatever. There are probably implementations using any of
these for most Machines or Microprocessors.

I believe that *Indirect* is the repectable one because it
gives best portability across various uP systems.
It has to sacrifice speed for the sake of this important aim.
Compilers please correct me if you like.

You like CALL/RETURN, especially for sbc. As it happens so do I,
both for sbc and on my main Machine. Other people prefer other
things, why not just let them get on with it.

If you *can* write a "post compiler for a Forth that gets it up
to assembler speed" why not do it and post to comp.lang.forth.

I'm sure that it would be received with serious interest and
you will probably get kissed on all four cheeks for such a
useful addition to the Forth language.

Regards, Tony. ( Who's now going to head down the garden with)
( a stick to see if he can find a Wasps Nest. )
--
[Tony Williams, Ledbury, Herefordshire, UK.---Pagewidth=64-----]

Rob McDonald

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

In article <VA.0000004...@Venus.chester.psygnosis.co.uk>,
rob.ni...@dial.pipex.com says...

>
><< No high level language runs 'at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE >>
>
>It's getting to the stage now where compilers are starting to produce
>more efficient code than writing directly in assembler.

I like C (gasp!) but I prefer Forth :-). I currently work in a predominantly
C/ASM shop.

After reading comments like the one quoted above many times, and being
inundated by many vendor's glossy brochures with impressive performance
claims, I decided to use C for a project using an embedded 8 bit MCU.

I am sure that for "main stream" processors (80X86, 68xxx, ...) it would be
hard to compete with the code generated.

H O W E V E R : If you are using a "niche" processor whose only
commercially available compiler started life as some undergrad's first
attempt at writing a compiler, you may not do quite as well.

I tried two of the three commercially available C compilers (tech support at
the other firm was a bit scary) for my processor. I ended up rewriting lots
of code in assembler for both speed and space constraints. The compilers
weren't bad, just not nearly as good as an experienced assembly language
programmer.

So where is this leading? I wish I had used Forth. Previous experience (and
Forth Folklore) says that it is the best choice in when space performance
and development time are all important. Next time I will go to the trouble
of convincing management to go with Forth.

Michael Krell

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to hbez...@vsngroep.nl

In article <55pjhm$2...@news.NL.net>, Hans Bezemer <hbez...@vsngroep.nl> wrote:

>I've written 4tH. 4tH is a conventional compiler using the Forth language. The
>use of words is well-defined and it CAN'T bomb out. It gives relevant error
>messages. In my opinion it takes the heat out of Forth. When mastered, goto
>Forth. Instead of writing shells, try this one. It is free. 4tH code can
>usually be ported to Forth.

Where is 4tH available?

Mike

Samuel A. Falvo II

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

mcdo...@mcmaster.ca (Rob McDonald) wrote:

>><< No high level language runs 'at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED AS ASM CODE >>
>>
>>It's getting to the stage now where compilers are starting to produce
>>more efficient code than writing directly in assembler.

>I like C (gasp!) but I prefer Forth :-). I currently work in a predominantly
>C/ASM shop.

Absolutely *NO WAY* can a compiler produce more efficient code than a
human. Sure, the human may take longer to do it, but NO WAY would a
compiler be able to out-smart a human coder... This is the biggest
heap of hogwash I've ever heard...

>I am sure that for "main stream" processors (80X86, 68xxx, ...) it would be
>hard to compete with the code generated.

80x86 compilers seriously LACK in their output efficiency. I've
actually seen the following code from an OPTIMIZING 32-bit compiler
(non-PC platform) costing in excess of $800:

MOV EBX,-68[EBP]
CALL __init_fpu

Now, SERIOUSLY, *WHY* would you call __init_fpu twice in a row? I can
see the reloading of EBX, since (for some reason) EAX-EDX are
considered scratch registers, but calling __init_fpu TWICE? From a
single floating point operation?!

This, of course, wasn't the end of it...

All the MC680x0 compilers I've seen come VERY close to hand-coded
assembly. The difference, of course, is that a compiler doesn't use
the "complex" addressing modes that a human programmer would use, and
thus, produced larger code (and on some CPUs, takes more time to
execute). This, of course, is due to the COMPILER-OPTIMIZED
instruction set of the 680x0 series of processors (should read up on
it; it's really very interesting!).

The instruction set of a PowerPC is, as far as I can tell, anything
BUT C-compiler optimized. However, due to its orthogonality, it is
still better than Intel instruction set (which obviously is intended
for hand-assembly, due to its 8080 heritage).

>H O W E V E R : If you are using a "niche" processor whose only
>commercially available compiler started life as some undergrad's first
>attempt at writing a compiler, you may not do quite as well.

Both Borland and Microsoft compilers fit this category... Never seen
the output of Watcom or Symantec...

Julian V. Noble

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

Emmanuel Baechler writes:
> > altavoz: FORTH is dead cause of the stupid, narrow minded
> > people who supposedly DEFEND it.
>

> Forht is not popular as it was before, especially in the PC
> world. But it is not (yet?) dead. There are still many devices
> (watches, PDAs, washing machines, satellites, and so on.)
> where it is very useful.
>
> It is however striking to notice that all books on Forth have
> been published in the eighties (or earlier). This is the sign
> of a very serious trouble.

I agree with all in your post but the above paragraph. My book,
"Scientific FORTH" (which, BTW, has now sold out its first edition)
was published in 1992. Jack Woehr's book, "Forth: the New Model"
(or some such) was published in 1993 or 1994.

I have just completed (with Brad Rodriguez to help with the
sticky parts such as interfacing, AI, little languages, etc.)
a text on programming for scientists and engineers that uses
several illustration languages, incl. BASIC, C and Pascal.
The primary one, however, is Forth. Now, if my collaborator
will just get on with the editing (Ahem! Brad) we can get it
published. It fills a gap for the practitioner that the
ever-popular "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
(Abelson & Sussman)--with its dependence on Scheme--leaves
gaping, namely how to use the concrete (rather than abstract)
computer to do your work.

--
Julian V. Noble
j...@virginia.edu

Elizabeth Rather

unread,

Nov 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/7/96

to

Julian V. Noble wrote:
> > It is however striking to notice that all books on Forth have
> > been published in the eighties (or earlier). This is the sign
> > of a very serious trouble.
>
> I agree with all in your post but the above paragraph. My book,
> "Scientific FORTH" (which, BTW, has now sold out its first edition)
> was published in 1992. Jack Woehr's book, "Forth: the New Model"
> (or some such) was published in 1993 or 1994.
>
> I have just completed (with Brad Rodriguez to help with the
> sticky parts such as interfacing, AI, little languages, etc.)
> a text on programming for scientists and engineers that uses
> several illustration languages, incl. BASIC, C and Pascal.
> The primary one, however, is Forth. Now, if my collaborator
> will just get on with the editing (Ahem! Brad) we can get it
> published. It fills a gap for the practitioner that the
> ever-popular "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
> (Abelson & Sussman)--with its dependence on Scheme--leaves
> gaping, namely how to use the concrete (rather than abstract)
> computer to do your work.

Happy to report that an ANS Forth revision of Starting Forth is in
progress.

We are seeing more worldwide Forth activity nowadays than ever before.
One of the reasons there's less in print is that we are too busy doing
it to write about it!

Cheers,
Elizabeth

--
===============================================
Elizabeth D. Rather 1-800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. 310-372-8493
111 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Fax: 310-318-7130
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
===============================================

ebae...@hola.hospvd.ch

unread,

Nov 8, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/8/96

to Julian V. Noble

Julian V. Noble wrote:

> I agree with all in your post but the above paragraph. My book,
> "Scientific FORTH" (which, BTW, has now sold out its first edition)
> was published in 1992. Jack Woehr's book, "Forth: the New Model"
> (or some such) was published in 1993 or 1994.

Which means that I did never see the references of these two books.
Do you have them? Thanks very much for the correction! I'm glad to
learn that I was wrong.

> I have just completed (with Brad Rodriguez to help with the
> sticky parts such as interfacing, AI, little languages, etc.)
> a text on programming for scientists and engineers that uses
> several illustration languages, incl. BASIC, C and Pascal.
> The primary one, however, is Forth. Now, if my collaborator
> will just get on with the editing (Ahem! Brad) we can get it
> published. It fills a gap for the practitioner that the
> ever-popular "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
> (Abelson & Sussman)--with its dependence on Scheme--leaves
> gaping, namely how to use the concrete (rather than abstract)
> computer to do your work.

That's even more interesting! SICP is a true classic and a very
important textbook. It's dependence on scheme wouldn't be that much
a problem, if it was compatible with most existing Scheme. But
even the MIT's one needs a special package in order to be used
with SICP. In addition, it is in 7.2 Beta version since many years
and I suspect that it won't be running for very long.

I would be very interested in buying a copy of your book when it
is released.

Best regards

ebae...@hola.hospvd.ch

unread,

Nov 8, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/8/96

to

Elizabeth Rather wrote:

> Happy to report that an ANS Forth revision of Starting Forth is in
> progress.

That's excellent news too. When will it be published?

> We are seeing more worldwide Forth activity nowadays than ever before.
> One of the reasons there's less in print is that we are too busy doing
> it to write about it!

But if it isn't widely known, even the best idea is of little value.
Books are also very important to attract new people.

Emmanuel Baechler
Chemin du Stade 4
1007 Lausanne

Switzerland

Tom Almy

unread,

Nov 8, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/8/96

to

In article <55t4n3$a...@informer1.cis.McMaster.CA>,

mcdo...@mcmaster.ca (Rob McDonald) wrote:
>I am sure that for "main stream" processors (80X86, 68xxx, ...) it would be
>hard to compete with the code generated.
>

>H O W E V E R : If you are using a "niche" processor whose only
>commercially available compiler started life as some undergrad's first
>attempt at writing a compiler, you may not do quite as well.

There's another factor in that some of these processors are so crude that it's
basically impossible to write a good C compiler for them. You can only get
good performance by machine code tricks that C doesn't handle. Forth, when
writen in assembler, looks good in these cases.

However times are changing, and in a relatively negative way for Forth. This
I completed a conversion of Forth assembler and interpreter from 68HC11 to
68HC12. The latter is "upward compatible" but the nature of many of the
additions is important -- they were in support of high level languages,
particularly C. The HC12 directly supports use of stack frames, critical to
the operation of C but missing from the HC11. It will make a major improvement
in C performance, but the additional features were worth less than a 10%
speed boost for Forth. Code size drops markedly as well, however, again, with
the bulk of Forth being threaded code it doesn't get much improvement.

Another important feature of the HC12 is that it has automatic memory bank
switching for code, thus relieving the size constraints. The arguments about
the compactness of Forth just don't have much weight any more. We are living
in times where a 100k+ "Hello World" program in C++ under Microsoft Windows
doesn't raise an eyebrow.

Tom Almy

Andrew McKewan

unread,

Nov 8, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/8/96

to

Tom Almy wrote:
> The arguments about
> the compactness of Forth just don't have much weight any more. We are living
> in times where a 100k+ "Hello World" program in C++ under Microsoft Windows
> doesn't raise an eyebrow.

Yes, I recently saw an ad for QNX where it boasted of a real-time OS
with a GUI in "under 1 MB RAM!"

lgl...@aol.com

unread,

Nov 9, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/9/96

to

In article <NVygyMrC...@teleport.com>, al...@teleport.com (Tom Almy)
writes:

>However times are changing, and in a relatively negative way for Forth.
This
>I completed a conversion of Forth assembler and interpreter from 68HC11
to
>68HC12. The latter is "upward compatible" but the nature of many of the
>additions is important

----- Much interesting detail ----

One question, what is the relative cost of the 68HC11 and 68HC12 ?
Can we not
build MUCH cheaper products with skinny Forth?

-- L. Greg Lisle

Jonah Thomas

unread,

Nov 9, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/9/96

to

In <19961109133...@ladder01.news.aol.com> lgl...@aol.com writes:

Temporarily, yes. But using highly-skilled design labor to create
cheap products using obsolescent hardware probably will remain a minor
niche market.

68HC12 cost will go down. Eventually the manufacturer will stop
producing 68HC11 and only produce some higher-powered chip that's
downwardly compatible. And then even for high-volume applications the
guy who can quick write a sloppy Basic or C++-library thing that wastes
the capabilities of the high-powered chip but gets the job done, costs
less than the guy who could have made it run on a 68HC11.

We probably don't want to be known primarily in terms of cheap
trailing-edge technology. Under budget is good. On time is good. Low
power use, close control of the hardware, simple design, those are
good.
Verification would be good. If we get a whole lot of projects where
they choose Forth because they need to get it done with cheap hardware
and 1/4 of the usual software cost, we're going to get a certain
percentage of them that run out of money. Too many of those and people
will tend to avoid us because they don't want to look like they might
run out of money.

Chris Jakeman

unread,

Nov 10, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/10/96

to

In article <328307...@hola.hospvd.ch>, ebae...@hola.hospvd.ch writes

>Julian V. Noble wrote:
>
>> I agree with all in your post but the above paragraph. My book,
>> "Scientific FORTH" (which, BTW, has now sold out its first edition)
>> was published in 1992. Jack Woehr's book, "Forth: the New Model"
>> (or some such) was published in 1993 or 1994.
>
>Which means that I did never see the references of these two books.
>Do you have them? Thanks very much for the correction! I'm glad to
>learn that I was wrong.

The FAQ (posted to comp.lang.forth monthly) includes these references:

"Scientific FORTH: a modern language for scientific computing"
Julian V. Noble, Mechum Banks Publishing, 19??, 300 pages,
ISBN 0-9632775-0-2, price $50.

Julian V. Noble <j...@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> writes:
While not intended for the Forth novice, Scientific FORTH contains a
good many serious examples of Forth programming style, useful
programs,
as well as innovations intended to simplify number crunching in Forth.
It can now be found in the libraries of several major universities
(e.g. Yale, U. of Chicago and Rockefeller U.) and government and
industrial laboratories (e.g. Fermilab and Motorola). It comes with a
disk containing all the programs discussed in the book. An update
file has recently been posted to GEnie/FIG.

"Forth: The New Model - A Programmer's Handbook" Jack Woehr,
M&T Publishing, 1992, 315 pages, ISBN: 0-13-036328-6, DOS disk included,
price $45.

Describes features of ANS Forth and how to use it to write portable
Forth programs. Published 2 years before the Standard was approved,
it predicts the Standard very closely. Currently the only book about
ANS Forth.

Ong Hian Leong <sco...@solomon.technet.sg> writes:
The author is (as at time of print) VP of Forth Interest Group and
member of X3J14, so he presumably knows what he's talking about. 8-)

Hope this helps,

Marcel Hendrix

unread,

Nov 11, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/11/96

to

Andrew McKewan <mck...@austin.finnigan.com> wrote Re: FORTH , DEAD LANG'

I would be extremely interested in a Forth implementation of a Unix-like OS
with a GUI in under 1 MB RAM (or any amount for that matter). Maybe I don't
understand your point :-)

-marcel

ebae...@hola.hospvd.ch

unread,

Nov 12, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/12/96

to

Chris Jakeman wrote:

> The FAQ (posted to comp.lang.forth monthly) includes these references:
>
> "Scientific FORTH: a modern language for scientific computing"

> ...

> "Forth: The New Model - A Programmer's Handbook" Jack Woehr,

> ...
> Hope this helps,

Here's what's happening with careless reading! It helps and thanks a lot.

Best regards

Emmanuel Baechler

Mike Coughlin

unread,

Nov 15, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/15/96

to

In article <6K$PnO9...@business.forth-ev.de>,
Wolfgang Allinger <A...@business.forth-ev.de> wrote:

>There are alway strange people doing strange things. Watch them!

>Open Boot, Postscript, Assyst, Rhyad Airport, British Telecom, Space
>shuttle, Zyxel, Federal Express, SUN Microsytems, Hewlett Packard, IBM-
>CAD....

Forth programmers are always telling non-forth programmers
about Forth's advantages. I use Forth a little bit so I know
that it is more logical than other languages, faster to program,
easy to learn, etc. But Forth programmers don't do what is
needed to promote Forth. The language is good for talking to
machines, but hardly ever used to talk to people. Chuck Moore's
custom of writing code that does the most computation possible
in the fewest lines and not doing a write-up is followed by
other Forth programmers. The textbooks that teach people to
use computers teach them to use the inefficient methods of
other computer languages.

Note the above list of applications written in Forth.
None of them are likely to be known by anybody other than
Forth programmers. The exception is Postscript which resembles
Forth by accident. If Forth is so good, when was it used to
write a real program that many people use? The one that comes
closest is the Sun boot ROM. Well that's hidden from sight
and is only used to start up the big C program called Unix
(unless things go wrong). We are not going to impress anybody
by telling them that an obsolete unsupported item like
Assyst is a version of Forth. The airport at Rhyad might be
run on Forth programs, but if these programs are any good
why don't they get used at the other airports of the world?

If we want to convince somebody that Forth is a great
language show them some great Forth code with clear
documentation. Where is it?

--
Michael Coughlin mi...@gnu.ai.mit.edu Cambridge, MA USA

Randy Leberknight

unread,

Nov 15, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/15/96

to

Mike Coughlin wrote:
>
> In article <6K$PnO9...@business.forth-ev.de>,
> Wolfgang Allinger <A...@business.forth-ev.de> wrote:
>
> >There are alway strange people doing strange things. Watch them!
>
> >Open Boot, Postscript, Assyst, Rhyad Airport, British Telecom, Space
> >shuttle, Zyxel, Federal Express, SUN Microsytems, Hewlett Packard, IBM-
> >CAD....
>
> Forth programmers are always telling non-forth programmers
> about Forth's advantages. I use Forth a little bit so I know
> that it is more logical than other languages, faster to program,
> easy to learn, etc. But Forth programmers don't do what is
> needed to promote Forth. The language is good for talking to
> machines, but hardly ever used to talk to people.

...

>
> Note the above list of applications written in Forth.
> None of them are likely to be known by anybody other than
> Forth programmers.

What do you mean? Nobody knows it was done in Forth?
You agree that it is good for use in machines,
and then complain when the applications are emmbedded? What is your
point?

...

> If Forth is so good, when was it used to
> write a real program that many people use? The one that comes
> closest is the Sun boot ROM. Well that's hidden from sight
> and is only used to start up the big C program called Unix
> (unless things go wrong).

Please define a "real Program".

>We are not going to impress anybody
> by telling them that an obsolete unsupported item like
> Assyst is a version of Forth.

Ahh, so a real program is one that impresses the masses? And this, by
your definition, does not include emmbedded systems. By this logic you
are implying that we should not use it where it shines, because not
enough people will be immpressed.

>The airport at Rhyad might be
> run on Forth programs, but if these programs are any good
> why don't they get used at the other airports of the world?

So if the whole world doesn't use it, it's no good. You should know by
now that the people who use Forth use it because it gives them results.
They are not in the habit of waiting for the rest of the world to
approve of their methods. Sometimes this is a drawback. For example,
Forth seems to be way behind in the user interface area, even though
it's interactivity would make it great for user interface design and
programming. MPE's Guide, which builds user interfaces is a good start.

> If we want to convince somebody that Forth is a great
> language show them some great Forth code with clear
> documentation. Where is it?

On this I agree with you very much. Show good examples of clear code
accomplishing great things with simplicity. People will be immpressed,
and we could use publicly available examples of this.

On the subject of impressing people, in my experience people are
impressed by actually using Forth to solve a preoblem. I have seen very
anti-Forth people converted by using it, but not by talk. Therefore, I
try to demonstrate it, and have people try it, with supervision.