Chuck Moore vs. lesser programmers (was: Gforth, images, GPL)
Michael Coughlin
I've been trying to write a short, polite, and diplomatic
response for these many months. I've failed. But I think these
topics are so important that I will post my random thoughts and
hope for the best.
Elizabeth D. Rather wrote:
>
> Michael Coughlin wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps I should have said C/Unix programmers. When I
> > discuss commenting with programmers (which I do more offen
> > than the average person), I've discovered an interesting
> > result.
> > After confronting a C programmer who has written
> > uncommented code, I get an apology and he looks ashamed.
> > When I do the same with a Forth programmer, he looks at
> > me like I'm crazy.
> >
> >...
> >
> > Contrast the C/Unix tradition with the way Dr. Ting
> > describes early Forth in "eForth and Zen" as posted on
> > Jeff Fox's web page
> > http://www.UltraTechnology.com/efzen.htm
> > "astronomers loved it so much that they made it the
> > standard language for observatory automation. It was
> > fairly easy to use but very difficult to understand. The
> > source code traveled to the far corners of the world with
> > the telescopes, but the knowledge and understanding of
> > Forth was only passed from mouth to mouth and heart to
> > heart. Hence Forth became an oral tradition these days.
> > Forth code tended to be concise and often packed tightly
> > in blocks. In-line documentation and comments were deemed
> > too expensive, and most code was poorly commented.
> > Forth thus acquired the reputation of a write-only
> > language."
> > Even to this day Forth programmers still follow Chuck
> > Moore's example and skimp on documentation and comments
> > in source code.
> > I'm very glad to see Gforth being improved by programmers
> > of various languages and even including someone who writes
> > documentation who is perhaps not a C programmer.
> Swell, we now have, in addition to sweeping generalizations
> from Michael (who is proud of never having seen a modern or
> commercial Forth nor talked to many -- if any --
> professional Forth programmers) quoted history about early
> Forth from Ting, who also knows nothing of the subject.
Proud is not the right word. Confounded is a better word.
Why is a language like Forth, a clear advance over other
programming languages, not getting its fair share of attention
in the marketplace of ideas? Why is a "modern commercial" Forth
not as well known as the fig-Forth temporary hobbyist version?
If Dr. Ting doesn't know about the earliest history of Forth,
he certainly describes the state of Forth when I first found out
about it around 1981. I think his essay "eForth and Zen" has
several interesting points to consider.
I can't talk to many professional Forth programmers since
there aren't many. I meet programmers who use C, C++, Visual
Basic, and Java, all the time, socially and not because they
use computers. I have met professional Forth programmers at
local fig meetings and from correspondence on
comp.lang.forth. Most of my opinions of Forth are formed by
conversations with professional programmers who either use
Forth or would like to. And I listen to those who say "Forth
is a write only" language as well.
> The Forth at NRAO (which was the first version widely
> circulated among astronomers) did not, indeed, have as much
> in the way of in-line comments as today's systems due to
> resource limitations, but it was documented extensively by
> manuals that were always distributed with the systems. It
> was part of my job to support the astronomers who took
> systems home with them, as well as writing and editing the
> manuals. I know of a number of successful installations,
> which is remarkable considering that there was far less
> uniformity and compatibility among platforms in those days.
> I don't recall ever hearing those people describe Forth as
> "write-only" at any of the astronomical conferences or
> private meetings I attended.
> Indeed, the first time I encountered that label was in the
> early 80's, when FIG Forth was being widely distributed and
> articles were appearing in magazines (e.g., Dr. Dobbs, Byte,
> Electronics, Electronic Design, etc.) about Forth. Now,
> I have never seen or used FIG Forth, so I won't comment on
> its documentation style.
It varies. You can still find listings on the web, but they
are hiding among many references when you do a search. Try
pcfig4th.arc for a late release originally posted on GENie.
Also look at fig86.arc. These are not like the original Apple II
fig-Forth listing. There is a web page with recent material on
fig-Forth at
http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst/figforth.html
> But I _do_ know that what happened
> with the magazine publications was nearly disastrous. The
> problem was that code samples were treated as illustrations,
> and "re-drawn" by someone who knew absolutely nothing about
> the technical issues involved. They re-arranged or omitted
> "punctuation" (commas, periods, colons, semicolons, etc.),
> and added or removed spaces to suit their taste. The result
> was usually incomprehensible to even a Forth expert, and
> God knows what it looked like to someone who had never seen
> the language. One can hardly blame the thousands of people
> who saw only those articles from thinking the language is
> "write only," and a convenient tag like that is easy to
> catch on. Magazines commonly let authors review the typeset
> text, but not the illustrations (even today), so there was
> no chance to fix the problems.
Yes, I saw that too. Around the same time I even saw the
same kind of massive errors in reproducing code in a
manufacturer's manual for a DSP chip. We don't have that
problem with Forth today since those types of publications
don't print anything about Forth anymore, do they?
I exaggerate; I did see three articles in the last ten years.
I think I first saw the term "write-only" connected with
APL. It was during the time that Pascal was the fashionable way
to teach beginning computer students. Maybe its not fig Forth
that made programmers say Forth was write-only; maybe its
because Pascal teachers said pay attention to readability.
> So long as Chuck Moore was at FORTH, Inc. (from our birth in
> 1973 until 1982) he was a leader in finding better ways of
> providing internal source documentation (stack comments,
> shadow blocks, etc.) and promoting within FORTH, Inc. a
> clear and readable style. This has been reflected in our
> products, in the courses we teach, in the custom code we
> write, and has been generally (though not universally)
> emulated by our customers in their code.
> It is absolutely fallacious to assert that Chuck ever
> opposed good internal documentation, or that "Forth
> programmers" as a generalization oppose it. Our style
> isn't much like the Unix/C style, because it's
> more appropriate to Forth's unique needs (and, besides, was
> developed independently).
> Cheers,
> Elizabeth
Every programmer loves to read good documentation, but
nobody likes to write it -- that's no fun.
Let me quote from another c.l.f article by Ms. Rather
"Remember also that Michael lives 3,000 miles from Chuck and has
no idea how Chuck works."
So how does someone who lives 3,000 miles away find out
how Chuck works? Can it be done? I don't want to be like a
director of the Forth Interest Group who has never read a
fig-Forth listing.
Is the code in the following
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/ftp.dei.isep.ipp.pt/pub/forth/reviewed/cmforth.zip
ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Compilers/native/misc/cmforth.zip
ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Archive/others/cmforth.arc
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/ftp.dei.isep.ipp.pt/pub/forth/others/cmforth.arc
an example of the work Chuck does, or has it been changed after
he wrote it? I see lots of rewrites of Chuck's code ideas, but
very little that might be his original work. And nothing recent.
For an all too brief time around 1990, the ACM published a
little journal dedicated to Forth called SIGForth. There are
copies of it in the MIT engineering library. Chuck Moore wrote
a regular column for it where he discussed his feelings about
commenting. So I can quote his exact words.
"Everyone agrees that well-commented code is the elusive
goal we all strive for. So its to be expected that I disagree.
A well-written program does not need comments. Alternately,
comments are a crutch to make intelligible a poorly organized
program."
"I've always dreamed of the manager (customer) reading my
code. Admiringly, of course. It almost never happens. If
I added more comments it would make no difference. The fact
is, I'm paid to assume responsibility for my code and no one
wants or needs to read it. With the possible exception of
myself -- in the future."
"I've read my share of code -- tons of it. I can't recall a
comment that was helpful."
My experience has been completely the opposite. While
I did think that I could write good programs with no comments
for the first year when I learned programming, my code and the
methods I used needed to be reviewed for accuracy by my
supervisor and consultants outside my company. Now I can't
recall any program that was worth reading without comments.
People have given me copies of their programs and told me the
code was very clear. They then proceeded to tell me a bunch of
important information that I had to know to use the program,
and was not written down. I know when I work on a program for
a while, I become unable to tell what is clear and what is not.
When I think my code is commented enough, I give it to
someone and ask "What is not clear on this listing?" If I can
actually get someone else to study it, they always ask me about
something that I thought was obvious, and I'm shocked to see
that I completely missed seeing that it was not at all obvious.
The result of this exercise does not result in a listing that
other people happily read, but it does produce a listing that I
can understand and modify months later.
Unlike Chuck, I cannot think of a computer program as being
in the same category as written prose. Computing is
mathematical; computer programs use formulas and equations in a
special machine readable form. I would no more think that an
uncommented computer program could be understood by a human
being than I would think that pages of only equations and
formulas would be. When I write a technical report, I put text
and the formulas together. I don't put the formulas in one
place and the text in another. So I don't think that shadow
screens are such a hot idea. They cut down on compiling time
from a floppy disk, but they assume that the space for
comments is about the same size as the space for code. Forth
code is much smaller than an explanation of what it is doing,
especially well organized efficient fast running Forth code.
Just for the sake of argument, lets consider the proposition
that Chuck writes clear code and documentation. Do the people
who work with Chuck really believe this? The old-time C and
Unix programmers really believe that Kernighan, Ritchie and
Thompson wrote good stuff. They waited decades until they could
publish the original Unix C code as an example for new
C hackers to admire and emulate.
See the web page at
http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/PUPS/
or the original copyrighted AT&T Unix sources at
http://www.sco.com/offers/ancient.html
The old book by John Lions used to teach C and Unix
programming in the 1970's was republished as soon as the
restrictions of AT&T's trade secret policy could be lifted.
They don't even care that this code only runs on totally
obsolete DEC PDP computers. They have PDP emulator software.
Here's a little quote (I hope I got the author right) that sums
up their feelings. See the web page at
http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/solo/192/slashdot/thompson.htm
for more on the subject.
==============================================================
Phil Karn ka...@qualcomm.com
Let me get this straight: I'm going to run the Linux I
bought to replace Windows that I bought to replace DOS that I
bought to replace my Atari 400 so I can run a Java RTE so I can
run a PDP emulator so I can run Unix V7 so I can rebuild V6
from the Lions-commented source in a book legally reprinted
from an illegally photocopied Australian book based on source
code from that came from New Jersey by way of Wales.
To quote Calvin and Hobbes, "The theological implications
are staggering."
==============================================================
I wish the people who have Chuck Moore's code would do better
editing and publishing. I really like to tell people that Forth
is a great programming language, and they might believe me
someday if I had something to show them that proved my point the
way C programmers can.
> --
> ===============================================
> Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
> FORTH Inc. +1 310-372-8493
> 111 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Fax: +1 310-318-7130
> Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
> http://www.forth.com
>
> "Forth-based products and Services for real-time
> applications since 1973."
> ===============================================
--
Michael Coughlin m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net Cambridge, MA USA
Better Late than Never
Jerry Avins
>
...
> And I listen to those who say "Forth
> is a write only" language as well.
There may be some truth to that. With most languages one can learn the
meaning of every token, and use the knowledge to decipher any piece of
code. It says here. Actually, there may be "magic numbers", hidden
assumptions (or knowledge) about some of the data and hardware that make
complete analysis impossible. Forth is not like most languages; it is
extensible. The number of possible extensions is infinite, so no one can
know them all. The number of reasonable names is finite, so some will be
reused in new (or only slightly different) ways.
Most of us know that to read and understand a Forth program, we need to
start at the beginning and learn the new language that the programmer
wrote for the problem at hand. To programmers familiar only with non
extensible languages, the beginning is "mere detail" and the meat is in
main(). The whole concept of a new language to fit the problem seems
bizarre to them. No wonder they can't read it!
>
...
I half agree with Moore. Most inline comments that I write are for
myself to keep the code straight as I write it, or purely didactic, for
beginners I'm trying to teach in absentia. Every decent Forth has
documentation describing the action of all the words in the kernel and
extensions. Good documentation for a program consists in part of similar
descriptions of each word written by the programmer. Shadow screens once
served this need, but now other ways are needed.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
cLIeNUX user
>> >
> Proud is not the right word. Confounded is a better word.
>Why is a language like Forth, a clear advance over other
>programming languages, not getting its fair share of attention
>in the marketplace of ideas? Why is a "modern commercial" Forth
>not as well known as the fig-Forth temporary hobbyist version?
Because it's too simple, flexible and too low-level for the prevailing
software marketing paradigm. Who's going to do a Java-like marketing push
for something that can metacompile itself into a "product that can compete
with itself"? This is another ancient rant of mine.
Chuck is bewildered at people that write thier own parsers. Some reasons
for doing so are quite obvious as soon as software ownership enters the
picture. Every imaginable bletchery can be justified as product security,
and this goes on even in open source. Do some hideous hack and become a
darling of the Internet. Do some highly valuable functional improvement to
something in 2 lines of code and get shunned. I've had a taste of both.
Forth needs its own marketing paradigm, similar to songwriter royalties.
See the membership docs at www.clienux.com as an example of an attempt at
this, translated into the context of open source unix.
Rick Hohensee
www.clienux.com
Elizabeth D. Rather
> I agree with you, though, in that there is not an obvious top-notch Forth to
> try out, as there are with implementations of some other languages. There
> are standard, free implementations of Lua and Ruby, for example. One of the
> best Smalltalks for Windows (Dolphin) is inexpensive--only $70 or so for the
> basic version, $150 for the mid-range, and $295 for full-blown professional
> version. Prolog is a good example of a confused market. There are many
> Prologs, but the inexpensive ones tend to feel crusty, and the really good
> ones have six figure price tags.
>
> There are some excellent Forth's out there, but the free ones tend to be, I
> don't know, kind of lackluster and behind the times. The really good ones,
> like ProForth VFX and SwiftForth, cost as much as the professional editions
> of Visual C++ or Delphi, so they are hard to justify, at least for many
> projects. I'd love to see a clean optimizing Forth--sans GUI tools and
> such--check in at a fairly low price tag.
As of our mid-March release of SwiftForth 2.2.2, you can try it free for an
unlimited time period, the only limitations being no kernel source (lots of
examples, though) and you can't make turnkey programs. And, yes, Michael, it
comes with lots of documentation!
Special pricing is available within 30 days of getting the trial version, which
make a fully-functional SwiftForth with all kernel source well in the range you
describe for the Smalltalks.
We also have a low-cost version of our SwiftX cross-compilers now, too.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
--
================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310-491-3356
5155 W. Rosecrans Ave. #1018 Fax: +1 310-978-9454
Hawthorne, CA 90250
http://www.forth.com
"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
================================================
William Tanksley
[Chuck wrote a long time ago:]
> "Everyone agrees that well-commented code is the elusive
>goal we all strive for. So its to be expected that I disagree.
>A well-written program does not need comments. Alternately,
>comments are a crutch to make intelligible a poorly organized
>program."
> "I've read my share of code -- tons of it. I can't recall a
>comment that was helpful."
> My experience has been completely the opposite. While
>I did think that I could write good programs with no comments
>for the first year when I learned programming, my code and the
>methods I used needed to be reviewed for accuracy by my
>supervisor and consultants outside my company. Now I can't
>recall any program that was worth reading without comments.
I share Chuck's opinion, and find yours surprising. The more complicated
code is, the more comments it has; although I don't condemn code simply
for being complicated, nor for having comments, I do believe that simpler
is better, and so spending time to make complicated code simple is better
than spending time making complicated code correctly commented.
Although if I fail to make the code simple, I'm stuck with the comments.
Complex code simply /must/ be commented.
>People have given me copies of their programs and told me the
>code was very clear. They then proceeded to tell me a bunch of
>important information that I had to know to use the program,
>and was not written down. I know when I work on a program for
>a while, I become unable to tell what is clear and what is not.
>When I think my code is commented enough, I give it to
>someone and ask "What is not clear on this listing?" If I can
>actually get someone else to study it, they always ask me about
>something that I thought was obvious, and I'm shocked to see
>that I completely missed seeing that it was not at all obvious.
>The result of this exercise does not result in a listing that
>other people happily read, but it does produce a listing that I
>can understand and modify months later.
There's a lot of study going on as to exactly what can help produce clear
code. Peer review is pretty much the only answer I've seen work reliably.
I'm glad to see you're using it. Others use the same thing with the
opposite assumption about comments, and get similar results.
> Unlike Chuck, I cannot think of a computer program as being
>in the same category as written prose. Computing is
>mathematical; computer programs use formulas and equations in a
>special machine readable form. I would no more think that an
>uncommented computer program could be understood by a human
>being than I would think that pages of only equations and
>formulas would be.
Unlike pages of formulas, a good program has a suite of unit tests and a
battery of acceptance tests. I would not expect any computer program to
be understood by any programmer, PERIOD. Throw in comments and the job
merely becomes harder; the poor programmer will have even less of an idea
of where to start.
My goal is to make the program easy to break down into small chunks; those
chunks may be easy to understand, and they have unit tests, so when I've
misunderstood them my misunderstanding will be quickly exposed and
hopefully corrected.
>Michael Coughlin m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net Cambridge, MA USA
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
Bernd Paysan
> There are some excellent Forth's out there, but the free ones tend to be, I
> don't know, kind of lackluster and behind the times.
Have you ever looked at bigForth? "Behind the times"? Free, has GUI
tools, does optimize to native code (did so for a long time, but today
is a bit behind VFX)... http://bigforth.sourceforge.net/.
If you prefer one without GUI tools and more processor-neutral, look at
Gforth.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
Paul E. Bennett
wtan...@bigfoot.com "William Tanksley" writes:
> I share Chuck's opinion, and find yours surprising. The more complicated
> code is, the more comments it has; although I don't condemn code simply
> for being complicated, nor for having comments, I do believe that simpler
> is better, and so spending time to make complicated code simple is better
> than spending time making complicated code correctly commented.
>
> Although if I fail to make the code simple, I'm stuck with the comments.
> Complex code simply /must/ be commented.
The one piece of commentary text that I am insistant on seeing is a
clear statement of intent. Such statements end up as glossary text in
the final documentation. If there are no other comments in the code the
statement of intention about what the word was meant to achive is then
the best guide for reviewers to work with, testers to test against and
auditors to adjudicate on.
[%X]
> There's a lot of study going on as to exactly what can help produce clear
> code. Peer review is pretty much the only answer I've seen work reliably.
> I'm glad to see you're using it. Others use the same thing with the
> opposite assumption about comments, and get similar results.
The main problem is that, although good peer-review should be going on
all the way through the project, it doesn't get more than a passing
lip-service in many establishments. Good technical reviews should start
at the conceptual level, work its way through all the preparatoy
documentation stages (and project documentation needs to be accomplished
first) and progress through coding and testing.
> My goal is to make the program easy to break down into small chunks; those
> chunks may be easy to understand, and they have unit tests, so when I've
> misunderstood them my misunderstanding will be quickly exposed and
> hopefully corrected.
System structural decisions can have major impact on the outcome. This
can be seen in the organisation of input and outputs to the system, where
the ease with which you can deal with these in software can mean a big
difference in operational speed. The system structure also has an impact
on integrity levels attained for the system and the ease of calculating
them. Unless you perform very sound technical reviews all the way through
the project you can very easily get stuffed one way or another. So, yes,
good technical reviews are the main lifesaver. However, you also need to
control changes to any aspect of the project to ensure that the changes
are co-ordinated, lessen impact on target accomplishment and are fully
understood regarding consequences of making the change.
--
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://p...@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972 .........NOW AVAILABLE:- HIDECS COURSE......
Tel: +44 (0)1235-814586 .... see http://www.feabhas.com for details.
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************
jmdrake
=====
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>Bernd Paysan wrote:
>>
>> Have you ever looked at bigForth? "Behind the times"? Free, has GUI
>> tools, does optimize to native code (did so for a long time, but today
>> is a bit behind VFX)... http://bigforth.sourceforge.net/.
>
>It looks like a bad port of a Linux application (maybe it looks good under
>Linux, but it feels second rate under Windows). Is it possible to separate
>BigForth from MINOS?
Well, and speaking strictly for myself, I LIKE the look of MINOS under
Windows.
I think MINOS has a great look and feel. And removing MINOS form BigForth
would be to remove the best part IMHO. Also it's the only free Forth
implementation that I know of that has OpenGL support that works under
Windows NT and 2000. (Win32Forth OpenGL only works under Window 9x). Also
the "dragon-graphics" 3D language extension is very nice. I've gotten to
the point where I can "kind of" make my own drawings/animations but none are
good enough yet to be worth sharing.
Of course you can do bigForth without using MINOS, but I REALLY don't see
the
point in that.
My only complaint with the Windows version is (last time I checked) it was
still a bit buggy, but whenever I find a bug that I can reproduce I post it
to the bigForth mailing list and Bernd is very good about fixing bugs.
------------------------------------------------------------
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Guns don't kill people...bullets do
(Pistol whipping exception already noted)
"I suppose that human beings looking at it would say that arms are the most
dangerous things that a dictator, a tyrant needs to fear. But in fact, no -
it is when people decide they want to be free. Once they have made up their
minds to that, there is nothing that will stop them." -- Desmond Tutu
Bernd Paysan
> My only complaint with the Windows version is (last time I checked) it was
> still a bit buggy, but whenever I find a bug that I can reproduce I post it
> to the bigForth mailing list and Bernd is very good about fixing bugs.
The Windows version of bigFORTH will always be buggier than the Linux
version, because I don't use it. I rely on bug reports from other
people; that's the essence of every free project anyway (and the reason
why I made it free).
>===== Original Message From "James Hague" <james...@volition-inc.com>
>I have looked at it, and I guess I was turned off by MINOS under Windows.
>It looks like a bad port of a Linux application (maybe it looks good under
>Linux, but it feels second rate under Windows). Is it possible to separate
>BigForth from MINOS?
Although jmdrake sais that it doesn't make much sense to separate MINOS
from bigFORTH: It is separated. You get a bigforth.exe (which starts in
a console window), and a xbigforth.exe (which is bigFORTH+MINOS).
Since it is a free product, I don't see any point in investing lots of
time into the port to a non-free OS. If you don't like bigFORTH under
Windows, use it under Linux. That's what I recommend, anyway.
Marise Cassivi
Win32forth and forth.inc
for windows, bigforth is a shits system. Very bad machine
Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:3AD76F04...@gmx.de...
Bernd Paysan
> for windows, bigforth is a shits system. Very bad machine
Constructive user comments like this are always welcome. I've never
supported bigFORTH for Windows by full heart, only done it because some
people asked me. It looks like it is time to pull the plug of the
Windows version, mark it as obsolete and unsupported.
This is the last call for volunteers, if nobody volunteers to support
and debug the Windows version of bigFORTH, it's definitely gone (well,
not gone, but I won't do anything further for it).
The DOS/Windows version of Gforth has basically the same problem: nobody
volunteers, and the main developer all have severe negative feelings
about these shit operating systems.
Bart Lateur
>This is the last call for volunteers, if nobody volunteers to support
>and debug the Windows version of bigFORTH, it's definitely gone (well,
>not gone, but I won't do anything further for it).
I just had my first look at it. As for Minos, the "swap dragon" example
is very impressive. Wow. But the menu system for the editor generally
feels very clunky (= slow). Those aren't real Windows menus, are they?
I'd like to dig deeper. Can you point me to where to start? Now I don't
have any clue where to begin. Note that I'm both pretty familiar with
Forth and with raw Windows programming (ą la Petzold).
--
Bart.
Jerry Avins
>
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> Bernd Paysan wrote:
> >
> > volunteers, and the main developer all have severe negative feelings
> > about these shit operating systems.
>
Right on! Of course, maintaining BigForth is an amateur operation,
despite the players being professionals. Is it unprofessional for a
lawyer to slough off a distasteful pro bono project? I'll bet that if
you volunteer to be Windows BigForth's primary maintainer, Bernd will
provide you with plenty of help.
We must be the at the onset of "silly season". This is the second recent
expression of disappointment that a free service isn't broad enough or
pretty enough.
J Thomas
> I find this attitude silly: "I have a great piece of software that
> I've written for Linux and Windows, but, oh yeah, the Windows version
> sucks because I hate Windows and Bill Gates is a moron, but if you
> are so stupid that you use Windows anyway then you won't mind. If
> you want a real OS, use Linux."
> If Bernd has no interest in the Windows version of BigForth and
> cannot afford to support it, I suggest I just drop that version.
Hindsight.
Imagine that you get your software working, and it looks like a small
effort to port. Why not try?
Then imagine that it turns out to be a small effort to port it 95Z, but
the last 5% looks clunky. Why not release it anyway? You've already
done that much work. Some people might want to use it. Some of them
might improve it.
And if they mostly don't use it and they do complain about it, why not
withdraw it?
I don't see that there's anything wrong here.
Samuel A. Falvo II
>I find this attitude silly: "I have a great piece of software that I've
>written for Linux and Windows, but, oh yeah, the Windows version sucks
>because I hate Windows and Bill Gates is a moron, but if you are so stupid
>that you use Windows anyway then you won't mind. If you want a real OS, use
>Linux."
Yes, this is silly season. Because that's *not* the gist of what he's
saying at all.
Several people wrote that bigForth under Windows sucked (sorry, but that's
the most succinct paraphrasing I could come up with). Bernd has repeatedly
mentioned that his support of bigForth under Windows is minimal because
that's not his main system of use. Still, when people tried to get bigForth
working under Win32, he was able to help (it runs, after all), and do it on
his time which he obviously feels should be devoted elsewhere.
Now, he's got a bunch of people telling him how unprofessional he is because
he chooses not to support Windows. Remember he's not making any money off
of bigForth (to the best of my knowledge; like GForth, it's a free
environment). He has *zero* obligations towards the Windows community. His
Forths are his creations for his projects, and have always been so since I
could remember. He does what he wants with it.
You want to see unprofessional? Look at yourselves. Look at everyone who
is accusing Bernd of being unprofessional because he just so happens to not
support YOUR favorite or preferred environment. Now, since it's oh-so-clear
that nobody appreciates the off-time work he's done to get bigForth working
under Win32, he's proclaimed that he's going to stop supporting the Win32
environment completely, thus ruining it for everyone who's currently using
bigForth under Windows. And now everyone is all pissed off about that!!
C'mon guys, you virtually insult Bernd, and then you expect him to bend over
for you? Get real.
>If Bernd has no interest in the Windows version of BigForth and cannot
>afford to support it, I suggest I just drop that version.
ah...the risks of Open Source(tm). These are dangerous times we live in...
--
KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447
Samuel A. Falvo II
Oceanside, CA
Jerry Avins
>
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> >
> > We must be the at the onset of "silly season". This is the second recent
> > expression of disappointment that a free service isn't broad enough or
> > pretty enough.
>
> written for Linux and Windows, but, oh yeah, the Windows version sucks
> because I hate Windows and Bill Gates is a moron, but if you are so stupid
> that you use Windows anyway then you won't mind. If you want a real OS, use
> Linux."
>
> afford to support it, I suggest I just drop that version.
>
You responded to a message of his stating that intent.
Andreas Klimas
> To me, that is very unprofessional. On the one hand, there's Windows, which
> is on just about every desktop in the corporate world and in tens of
> millions (or hundreds of millions) of homes.
agree
> Then there is Linux, which no one is knocking, but is certainly not as
> generally useful for most people (because the software they want isn't there,
> and the benefits are hard to
> elucidate).
sorry, totally disagree.
some of our customers will change from Win98/WinNT to linux because of
licensce costs (about some thousands WinXX's). also you have to need
expert for Win98 and WinNT because in a Lan which is that big with that
many differnet hardware and software Windows isn't esay any more.
in Linux (Unix) if you get into troubles, at least you have a very
transparent system where you might detect failures quickly. in Windows
you have to install the whole system very often.
on the other side, believe me, windows will gone soon ... it is too
expensive to support a single PC for every user.
> Being a software developer that ignores the most significant
> market out there is like a gas station owner that only sells gas to his few
> pet models of car. He can do that, sure, but why? Some things are not worth
did you hear eBusiness ? this is our future, not windows.
--
Greetings from Lake Constance, Germany
Andreas Klimas (kli...@k-r.de)
Samuel A. Falvo II
>some of our customers will change from Win98/WinNT to linux because of
>licensce costs (about some thousands WinXX's). also you have to need
>expert for Win98 and WinNT because in a Lan which is that big with that
>many differnet hardware and software Windows isn't esay any more.
>in Linux (Unix) if you get into troubles, at least you have a very
>transparent system where you might detect failures quickly. in Windows
>you have to install the whole system very often.
Sorry, I disagree here. Yes, Windows isn't an ideal network operating
system, but Linux has its fair share of problems on large networks too. I
used to manage two Internet service providers, so I speak with experience when
I say that even I had to re-install a Linux box or two. And it's not
because we couldn't figure out the problem. It's because the time spent
diagnosing the problem would dwarf the time spent just plain re-installing.
Linux is easier to manage on several levels, but don't think it's the grand
panacea. Companies have IS departments for a reason.
>on the other side, believe me, windows will gone soon ... it is too
>expensive to support a single PC for every user.
This is why .NET and Whistler are coming out. Windows isn't going away.
It's evolving into a mainframe operating system.
>did you hear eBusiness ? this is our future, not windows.
And Windows is every bit as much behind that as Linux is. Failure to
recognize that will assuredly guarantee economic failure in the market.
Bernd Paysan
> I just had my first look at it. As for Minos, the "swap dragon" example
> is very impressive. Wow. But the menu system for the editor generally
> feels very clunky (= slow). Those aren't real Windows menus, are they?
Certainly not. They are MINOS menus. MINOS uses GDI to draw into plain
windows (in case of the menus, they are just borderless). Note that menu
items itself are just other MINOS objects, and you can put whatever you
like into a Menu (even text fields or sliders).
> I'd like to dig deeper. Can you point me to where to start? Now I don't
> have any clue where to begin. Note that I'm both pretty familiar with
> Forth and with raw Windows programming (ą la Petzold).
A good start is probably the class browser (get it from the file menu,
or just type browser). Basically, there are actors, widgets, and
displays. The system-specific details are all inside displays. So if you
want to look why the menus are clunky or whatever, look at the Window
hierarchy; you'll find menu-frame there. Most of the code is actually
defined in the parent class (frame).
The reason why the menues behave as they do (unlike Windows) is because
I like it that way. There's a protable way to immitate Windows, but I
haven't taken the time to implement it. It would simply require to add a
mode to the menu-top button, so that it reacts on enter/leave for
popping up the window instead of clicking. MINOS itself should be even
capable of immitating the animated menus.
Bart Lateur
>Bart Lateur wrote:
>> But the menu system for the editor generally
>> feels very clunky (= slow). Those aren't real Windows menus, are they?
>
>Certainly not. They are MINOS menus. MINOS uses GDI to draw into plain
>windows (in case of the menus, they are just borderless).
>So if you
>want to look why the menus are clunky or whatever, look at the Window
>hierarchy; you'll find menu-frame there. Most of the code is actually
>defined in the parent class (frame).
>
>The reason why the menues behave as they do (unlike Windows) is because
>I like it that way. There's a portable way to immitate Windows, but I
>haven't taken the time to implement it.
Don't misunderstand me: it's not the fact that it behaves *differently*
than Windows which makes it clunky. But the first time I tried to get at
a menu, it took between a half second and a full second for the menu to
first appear. It feels like the first sign of needing a hardware
upgrade. If you want to boost a developer platform as "very fast" and
"having low requirements", this shouldn't happen.
It reminds me of my first experience with some Smalltalk implementation
on the PC. First it took minutes to load, and then it crashed. I hadn't
even done anything. Perhaps I might have needed bigger hardware. Of
course, I immediately deleted the whole package. It never had a second
chance. I'm sure other people respond in the same manner.
--
Bart.
Bernd Paysan
> Don't misunderstand me: it's not the fact that it behaves *differently*
> than Windows which makes it clunky. But the first time I tried to get at
> a menu, it took between a half second and a full second for the menu to
> first appear. It feels like the first sign of needing a hardware
> upgrade. If you want to boost a developer platform as "very fast" and
> "having low requirements", this shouldn't happen.
Indeed. And since it doesn't happen under Linux, it's quite likely a
result of my misunderstanding of the Win32 interface. One of the reason
why I call Windows a "shit OS" is that the MSDN documentation from
Microsoft is misleading, incomplete, and often enough boldly incorrect.
In the menu case, I have some ideas what's going wrong. I'm not able to
create the window as child of the parent menu (for whatever reason, I
simply don't know, if I try, it ignores the position of the window and
sends events to the void), therefore the parent window gets deselected.
This can take time. MINOS itself is fast and low-overhead, it's just the
interface to Windows that sucks.
Also, since MINOS brings its own widget library, it needs "windows under
the hood" knowledge, not just "you can open a menu by calling
CreateAndOpenPullDownMenuXYZfoobar with a resource id, you get the
selected item back".
Mike Hore
>...
> One of the reason
> why I call Windows a "shit OS" is that the MSDN documentation from
> Microsoft is misleading, incomplete, and often enough boldly incorrect.
The reason IMHO is that the OS is continually evolving.
You simply can't have stable well-documented software if you keep
changing it -- even if you're Micro$oft (some would say, ESPECIALLY
if you're Micro$oft...)
But according to a thread on comp.arch and several other groups,
the chickens are coming home to roost since the PC market is now
getting saturated, with the result that you don't have lots of
new users buying the latest version of the OS, and by sheer
weight of numbers forcing existing users to "upgrade". Most
are simply staying with Win 95 or 98 or whatever they already have.
It's just too painful and expensive to upgrade, for minimal gain.
It'll be interesting to see how Apple goes with a radical OS change.
Cheers, Mike.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Hore mike...@bigpond.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul E. Bennett
mike...@bigpond.com "Mike Hore" writes:
> Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> >...
> > One of the reason
> > why I call Windows a "shit OS" is that the MSDN documentation from
> > Microsoft is misleading, incomplete, and often enough boldly incorrect.
>
> The reason IMHO is that the OS is continually evolving.
>
> You simply can't have stable well-documented software if you keep
> changing it -- even if you're Micro$oft (some would say, ESPECIALLY
> if you're Micro$oft...)
>
> But according to a thread on comp.arch and several other groups,
> the chickens are coming home to roost since the PC market is now
> getting saturated, with the result that you don't have lots of
> new users buying the latest version of the OS, and by sheer
> weight of numbers forcing existing users to "upgrade". Most
> are simply staying with Win 95 or 98 or whatever they already have.
> It's just too painful and expensive to upgrade, for minimal gain.
>
> It'll be interesting to see how Apple goes with a radical OS change.
Even though the PC market is nearing saturation the corporations will
continue to upgrade at the rate of about once every three years. That
will still be a significant market. However, Microsoft is starting to
lose share of that market as some take up different OS strategies like
Linux, FreeBSD and aquire ARM and other High Performance end of the
systems.
Bernd Paysan
>
> Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> >...
> > One of the reason
> > why I call Windows a "shit OS" is that the MSDN documentation from
> > Microsoft is misleading, incomplete, and often enough boldly incorrect.
>
> The reason IMHO is that the OS is continually evolving.
Wrong. Microsoft adds a lot of new features to their OS, but in my port
of bigFORTH, I use plain old things like "open a window" or "draw a
line". Things that already existed in Windows 1.0. They are still not
implemented as documented. The reason is that Microsoft wants to
eliminate any chance that a Windows clone will become available and
useful.
And as Bill Gates sais "nobody buys an update for fixed bugs", they also
never fix bugs, but only implement new (buggy) features.
Don't get me wrong, Windows is ok for people who do no serious work on
their PC. But as programmer, Windows is not acceptable. The only reason
to use it is because of the user base, i.e. if you want to make money. I
don't have the intention to do that with my Forths, so I rather drop
support than wasting time that's not honored in the result. The people
who like to have bigFORTH under Windows can hope that volunteers like
Bart Lateur take over.
> You simply can't have stable well-documented software if you keep
> changing it -- even if you're Micro$oft (some would say, ESPECIALLY
> if you're Micro$oft...)
That's why I use (and like) free software. Even those systems that
change too fast to be documented well have at least source code to look
at. On the other side, widely used (free!) systems don't have innacurate
documentation, because if there's a discrepancy between source and doc,
someone will find out and fix what's broken.
Andreas Klimas
> > You simply can't have stable well-documented software if you keep
> > changing it -- even if you're Micro$oft (some would say, ESPECIALLY
> > if you're Micro$oft...)
>
> That's why I use (and like) free software. Even those systems that
> change too fast to be documented well have at least source code to look
> at. On the other side, widely used (free!) systems don't have innacurate
> documentation, because if there's a discrepancy between source and doc,
> someone will find out and fix what's broken.
my philosophy therefore is: don't document bad code, rewrite it.
since GNU, Linux and SourceNavigator (from RedHat) I don't
need and believe any program documentation (this doesn't include
tutorials and that stuff).
if you ever had contact with Smalltalk you probably know what I
mean. you don't need documentation you need good browsers (and
well developed code).
and this is the reason why I like forth, it is closer to Smalltalk
as you might think :-)
Andreas
Marcel Hendrix
Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, Windows is ok for people who do no serious work on
> their PC. But as programmer, Windows is not acceptable.
I don't have too much trouble with Windows NT and W2K. It looks like your
judgement is based on Windows 3.1 or 95/98, which are indeed slightly less
well thought out. I found Windows 95 impossible to work with, luckily nobody
forced me to work with it :-) I'm sure you don't mean to tell us X-windows
is very quick and efficient and very easy to program for?
-marcel
Bill McCarthy
> Don't get me wrong, Windows is ok for people who do no serious work
> on their PC. But as programmer, Windows is not acceptable. The only
> reason to use it is because of the user base, i.e. if you want to
> make money. I don't have the intention to do that with my Forths, so
> I rather drop support than wasting time that's not honored in the
> result. The people who like to have bigFORTH under Windows can hope
> that volunteers like Bart Lateur take over.
Windows is for people who do no serious work? Aren't you overstating
just a bit ;-) Those versions of windows built on 16-bit DOS (from
3.x and 9x to ME) are truly crap. But I don't think WinNT and Win2000
are in that category. They are quite reliable and there are plenty of
great tools for them.
I hope you don't drop development for gforth. The windows version is
build on a nix shell environment. This does not help for people who
choose a more DOS-like shell such as 4NT. It a shame nobody is
willing to help get gforth running with Mingw32.
Bill
Samuel A. Falvo II
>if you ever had contact with Smalltalk you probably know what I
>mean. you don't need documentation you need good browsers (and
>well developed code).
Having a document that explains the macroscopic view of a system is
*invaluable*. Without such a document, anyone who wants to change system
behavior, or fix bugs, will inevitably end up asking, "Where do I begin?"
Software documentation is *critical*.
Andreas Klimas
> Having a document that explains the macroscopic view of a system is
> *invaluable*. Without such a document, anyone who wants to change system
> behavior, or fix bugs, will inevitably end up asking, "Where do I begin?"
>
> Software documentation is *critical*.
I agree ! but don't document the source code itself.
You have to have: UseCases, architecture view (test architecture
included)
and design view. these you have to have at very least.
Andreas Klimas
> I don't have too much trouble with Windows NT and W2K.
troubles start in heterogenous environments (Novell + Lotus Notes
+ X - Servers + ...)
> It looks like your
> judgement is based on Windows 3.1 or 95/98, which are indeed slightly less
> well thought out. I found Windows 95 impossible to work with, luckily nobody
> forced me to work with it :-) I'm sure you don't mean to tell us X-windows
> is very quick and efficient and very easy to program for?
but much more easier than WinXX. if I have to develop software for
windows
the only tool for me is calling smalltalk. I have tried C and C++ but
it failed. there are other tools, I know, but in case of C I disagree.
Paul E. Bennett
> Mike Hore wrote:
> >
> > Bernd Paysan wrote:
> >
> > >...
> > > One of the reason
> > > why I call Windows a "shit OS" is that the MSDN documentation from
> > > Microsoft is misleading, incomplete, and often enough boldly incorrect.
> >
> > The reason IMHO is that the OS is continually evolving.
>
> Wrong. Microsoft adds a lot of new features to their OS, but in my port
> of bigFORTH, I use plain old things like "open a window" or "draw a
> line". Things that already existed in Windows 1.0. They are still not
> implemented as documented. The reason is that Microsoft wants to
> eliminate any chance that a Windows clone will become available and
> useful.
Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of a clone, I think
that KDE is definitely enough look and feel like windows (albeit a few
small differences) that why most serious people (especially the commercial
companies) are not switching over is beyond me.
> And as Bill Gates sais "nobody buys an update for fixed bugs", they also
> never fix bugs, but only implement new (buggy) features.
That seems to be true enough.
[%X]
> That's why I use (and like) free software. Even those systems that
> change too fast to be documented well have at least source code to look
> at. On the other side, widely used (free!) systems don't have innacurate
> documentation, because if there's a discrepancy between source and doc,
> someone will find out and fix what's broken.
I'd encourage anyone on this group to consider ditching M$ product and
using a much better OS (almost anything with an "X" at the end is better).
Having installed FreeBSD and KDE this year I am thouroughly enjoying
running it. Now all I have to do is move my internet access facilities
across.
Paul E. Bennett
kc5...@armored.net "Samuel A. Falvo II" writes:
> On Sun, 22 Apr 2001 22:08:42 GMT, Andreas Klimas wrote:
> >if you ever had contact with Smalltalk you probably know what I
> >mean. you don't need documentation you need good browsers (and
> >well developed code).
>
> Having a document that explains the macroscopic view of a system is
> *invaluable*. Without such a document, anyone who wants to change system
> behavior, or fix bugs, will inevitably end up asking, "Where do I begin?"
>
> Software documentation is *critical*.
...and should receive very stringent critique as well. So, in the end
it is the quality of technical review that is important. Without very
sound technical review of the material presented by developers, you
are always at risk of missing the important small bug in design.
Bart Lateur
>Having a document that explains the macroscopic view of a system is
>*invaluable*. Without such a document, anyone who wants to change system
>behavior, or fix bugs, will inevitably end up asking, "Where do I begin?"
:-)
Note that *I* ask this very question in this very own thread, a couple
of days ago, WRT BigFORTH. BigFORTH, too, appears to have a very
extensive class browser.
This most definitely proves your point.
--
Bart.
Bernd Paysan
> I don't have too much trouble with Windows NT and W2K. It looks like your
> judgement is based on Windows 3.1 or 95/98, which are indeed slightly less
> well thought out.
Nah, Windows 98 is completely uninstallable on my PC - it doesn't even
try to boot ;-). However, even though I can only test on NT, which is
much more reasonable, many users use Win 9x, and complain. The access
statistics of the bigFORTH page show twice as many 9x users than NT
users. NT has a lot less bugs, but it still suffers that a lot of bugs
are essential to run the many broken programs out there, and the
documentation accuracy is also not much improved.
Also, I'm quite sure most of the troubles I have with Windows is that I
want to use a bare-bone stripped down subset of it, and do all the rest
myself. That seems to be impossible. The entire M$ universe is built on
the philosophy "we know where we want to make you go today".
Bart Lateur
>The people
>who like to have bigFORTH under Windows can hope that volunteers like
>Bart Lateur take over.
I'm not applying for the job just yet, not as long as most users of
BigFORTH under Windows are more familiar with it than I am. That would
be silly.
--
Bart.
jmdrake
<Vw8D6.8527$hl.10...@wagner.videotron.net> :
>The best for windows,
>Win32forth and forth.inc
>
>for windows, bigforth is a shits system. Very bad machine
Not only is your post rude, but it's also not accurate.
There are pros and cons to Win32Forth vs. bigForth. Win32Forth may be more
stable, but it doesn't attempt to do as much. I doesn't have a GUI builder
and there is no OpenGL support out of the box. The third party OpenGL
support for it only works for Windows 95. iForth has OpenGL support but
it only works for Windows NT and Linux. If you want to do OpenGL under
Windows 9X/NT and Linux bigForth is the only option that I know of.
>
>Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote in message
>news:3AD76F04...@gmx.de...
>> jmdrake wrote:
>> > My only complaint with the Windows version is (last time I checked) it
>was
>> > still a bit buggy, but whenever I find a bug that I can reproduce I post
>it
>> > to the bigForth mailing list and Bernd is very good about fixing bugs.
>>
>> The Windows version of bigFORTH will always be buggier than the Linux
>> version, because I don't use it. I rely on bug reports from other
>> people; that's the essence of every free project anyway (and the reason
>> why I made it free).
>>
>> >===== Original Message From "James Hague" <james...@volition-inc.com>
>> >I have looked at it, and I guess I was turned off by MINOS under Windows.
>> >It looks like a bad port of a Linux application (maybe it looks good
>under
>> >Linux, but it feels second rate under Windows). Is it possible to
>separate
>> >BigForth from MINOS?
>>
>> Although jmdrake sais that it doesn't make much sense to separate MINOS
>> from bigFORTH: It is separated. You get a bigforth.exe (which starts in
>> a console window), and a xbigforth.exe (which is bigFORTH+MINOS).
>>
>> Since it is a free product, I don't see any point in investing lots of
>> time into the port to a non-free OS. If you don't like bigFORTH under
>> Windows, use it under Linux. That's what I recommend, anyway.
>>
>> --
>> Bernd Paysan
>> "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
>> http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
>
>
_______________________________________________
Submitted via WebNewsReader of http://www.interbulletin.com
jmdrake
<3addb...@corp.newsfeeds.com> :
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>> If Bernd has no interest in the Windows version of BigForth and cannot
>> afford to support it, I suggest I just drop that version.
>
>
>No offense intended, Bernd. It's just that a version of software intended
>to be second-rate is just not going to generate that much interest. More
>power to you with the Linux version.
>
>James
But what about those of us who actually think that the Windows version is
pretty good despite the bugs? What about those who like the idea of having
a Forth implementation that does OpenGL on Linux, Windows NT and Windows 9X
and are willing to report bugs when they can be reproduced and are patient
about waiting for them to be fixed? While bigForth under Windows isn't
perfect, its not crap either. And I simply don't have time to become "the"
maintainer for bigForth for Windows, but I would STRONGLY vote against it
being dropped.
jmdrake
<3ADDCC0D...@ix.netcom.com> :
>Hindsight.
>
>Imagine that you get your software working, and it looks like a small
>effort to port. Why not try?
Agree.
>Then imagine that it turns out to be a small effort to port it 95Z, but
>the last 5% looks clunky. Why not release it anyway? You've already
>done that much work. Some people might want to use it. Some of them
>might improve it.
Agree.
>And if they mostly don't use it and they do complain about it, why not
>withdraw it?
Disagree. I think the users of bigForth for windows actually outnumber
the complainers. Personally I think it's a great system. I don't think
it should be withdrawn. It should be kept around for those of us who
like and those who only want to moan and complain should just be ignored.
Constructive critisism is one thing. Whining is something else.
>I don't see that there's anything wrong here.
_______________________________________________
jmdrake
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
>>
>> the most succinct paraphrasing I could come up with). Bernd has
>repeatedly
>> mentioned that his support of bigForth under Windows is minimal because
>> that's not his main system of use. Still, when people tried to get
>bigForth
>> working under Win32, he was able to help (it runs, after all), and do it
>on
>> his time which he obviously feels should be devoted elsewhere.
>
>
>"The DOS/Windows version of Gforth has basically the same problem: nobody
>volunteers, and the main developer all have severe negative feelings about
>these
>shit operating systems."
>
>I am surprised that this discussion has gone off in the wrong direction.
>Occasionally someone posts the question: "What is a good, free Forth for
>Windows?" BigForth comes up. I do not think that BigForth is an option,
>because it is obviously a Linux-centric product (Which is completely fine!
>I also use Linux!), even to where the developers cannot hide their distaste
>for Windows (calling it "shit" in a public forum). That throws up red flags
>for me. I called this behavior "unprofessional," meaning that the goal is
>not simply to provide a good Forth system for people to use, but that there
>are ulterior, personal sticking-points at play as well.
You seem to blithly forget the fact that the "shit" word was first used by
some jerk to describe bigForth under Windows. It was only natural for Bernd
to reply in kind. And no, it might not have been professional. I wouldn't,
for example, expect someone from Forth Inc. to respond like that because they
would actually have something to lose for pissing off a potential customer
no matter how rude or obnoxious that potential customer might be.
>Certainly, BigForth
>is not a business, but it is still a language implementation, and language
>implementations are designed to attract users who rely on them. If I went
>to a web site for a programming language and saw anti-abortion material or
>banners about certain political candidates or crazy rants about how Intel
>sucks and AMD rocks, I'd be worried. No one wants personal issues tangled up
>with technical issues.
For the record there aren't any crazy rants at the bigForth website against
Windows either. A heated exchange in Usenet is a heated exchange in Usenet.
Nothing more, nothing less. And some of the worst rants against Windows
comes from people who have to regularly use it.
>Bernd is one of the grand old posters in comp.lang.forth. I always welcome
>his comments in this group. I am more puzzled than anything else, that
>people are taking offense to this subject. He doesn't like Windows. Nobody
>really wants to support BigForth for Windows. He even posted that he's on
>the verge of dropping it. As such, comments about BigForth maybe not being
>a viable option for Windows programmers should not be twisted into knocks
>against Linux or that people are trying to force Bernd to support systems he
>does not want to.
>
>James
Now there's a real stretch. And an odd one at that. No one has tried to
force Bernd to do anything. Some of us asked for a port to Windows early
on and since then some of us have reported bugs to the bigForth mailing
list as we found them. I certainly do my best not to be a burden. I only
report bugs that I can pin down and I don't simply send in complaints about
"the dang thing locked up". Bernd usually thanks whoever for the bug report
and it's often fixed by the next release. The system has been working quite
well to this point as far as I can tell. The traffic on the bigForth mailing
list is pretty light.
No, it's not perfect, but bigForth for windows is not a "shit" system either. Right now I only "hobby" program with. I mostly experiment with the Dragon
Graphics/OpenGL system. If I was trying to do serious development, I would
probably use Linux, but I would still like the option of being able to deploy
my work on Windows. Currently if you want to write cross platform OpenGL
using Forth then bigForth is the best option.
J Thomas
> In article <3AE1E736...@gmx.de> bernd....@gmx.de "Bernd
> Paysan" writes:
> > The reason is that Microsoft wants to
> > eliminate any chance that a Windows clone will become available and
> > useful.
> Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of a clone, I
> think that KDE is definitely enough look and feel like windows
> (albeit a few small differences) that why most serious people
> (especially the commercial companies) are not switching over is
> beyond me.
Suppose a significant number of commercial companies started switching
to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal action to get it shut down? Then
they'd be stuck.
Paul E. Bennett
I would hope such action fails. While the look and feel is quite
similar there are some very distinctive differences (small but
significant). KDE is also appears to be much faster than Win95, does
lot's less disk trashing and seems to be very robust (despite some
henious errors on my part when playing with GForth in a terminal
window - Return stack imbalance). If Windows operated as well I am
sure there would be a lot less complaint.
Leonard Zettel
OK, I'm not a lawyer. But I would love to see Mickeysquish explain how it
was perfectly legal for Redmond to steal the Apple Mac look and feel
(the courts have said so) but illegal for somebody else to pull the
same trick.
-LenZ-
John McKeon
J Thomas wrote in message <3AE5B786...@swbell.net>...
>
>Suppose a significant number of commercial companies started switching
>to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal action to get it shut down? Then
>they'd be stuck.
If precedent matters, it would be unlikely. It didn't work for Apple, when
Windows started looking like the Mac :)
Michael Coughlin
> "Paul E. Bennett" wrote:
> > a clone, I think that KDE is definitely enough look and
> > feel like windows (albeit a few small differences) that
> > why most serious people (especially the commercial
> > companies) are not switching over is beyond me.
>
> Suppose a significant number of commercial companies
> started switching to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal
> action to get it shut down? Then they'd be stuck.
There is nothing in copyright law to stop anyone from writing
a new program that had the look and feel of Microsoft Windows or
the look and feel of any other program. Copyright is for
copying, not doing something new. If KDE produced displays that
were exactly the same as what MS-Windows produced, so judges and
lawyers couldn't tell the difference, then there might be a
problem. If KDE used binary object code that was the same as
parts of MS-Windows, then there would be a problem. But that's
not the case. All the free Unix developers have been careful to
avoid violating copyright law.
Commercial companies aren't rapidly switching over to using
KDE because they don't know any better. There are a few who have
made their commercial packages available for Linux/KDE or
BSD-nix. When these programs make lots of money, more companies
will do the same.
So if anybody wants to rewrite Windows in Forth, go do it,
and don't worry about getting in trouble with look and feel.
--
Michael Coughlin m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net Cambridge, MA USA
Geoff Summerhayes
"Michael Coughlin" <m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net> wrote in message news:3AE6D1C5...@ne.mediaone.net...
Strange. It was my impression that the industry had started to
back Gnome over KDE. I've always been a little nervous that
KDE was built on Qt even if they are offering the Linux side
for free. KDE seems more stable but Gnome is catching up fast
and with the bigname support may soon outmatch it. Competition
is great, we'll end up being winners on both sides.
Geoff
Kristopher Johnson
Shell (which preceded Win95).
-- Kris
"John McKeon" <jmc...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:xoqF6.727$5B4.2...@news2.mia...
cLIeNUX user
>
>"Michael Coughlin" <m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net> wrote in message news:3AE6D1C5...@ne.mediaone.net...
>> J Thomas wrote:
>>
>> > "Paul E. Bennett" wrote:
>>
>> > > Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of
It bears mention that I get a lot done, (regardless of the whether or not
my work has any value, there's a good bit of it) in part because I don't
use X or any other GUI. I do use a mouse. A lot. And text colors when I
have the time. cLIeNUX is probably the best text-oriented Linux/GNU/unix,
but the larger point is that a GUI is not an OS.
Rick Hohensee
www.clienux.com
Arndt Klingelnberg
concerning "Re: Chuck Moore vs. lesser programmers (was: Gforth, images, GPL)":
> Bernd Paysan wrote:
> >
> > The DOS/Windows version of Gforth has basically the same problem:
> > nobody volunteers, and the main developer all have severe negative
> > feelings about these shit operating systems.
>
> To me, that is very unprofessional. On the one hand, there's Windows,
> which is on just about every desktop in the corporate world and in
> tens of millions (or hundreds of millions) of homes. Then there is
> Linux, which no one is knocking, but is certainly not as generally
> useful for most people (because the software they want isn't there,
This just reflects the US point of view.
LINUX is much more popular in europe, especially germany and france.
win9x is still more popular but people start to get more and more angry
(and blue in their faces) about non-causal-OSs .
there are still a lot of applications that perform not very well
with LINUX , but there are a lot of drivers and applications
that have problems using win ME or win NT/2000 .
I switch most of my work to linux, and for forth I switch
( aside of small embedded controllers ) from DOS to linux ,
no win inbetween.
--
Arndt Klingelnberg
( 'reply to' set --> a...@aachen.kbbs.org )
Aix la Chapelle :-) Euregio Meuse/Maas Rhine/Rhein
There are two kinds of fools,
One says - this is old and therefore good.
The other says - this is new and therefore better.
( pinched from Bob Katz )
## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##
J Thomas
> J Thomas wrote:
> > Suppose a significant number of commercial companies started
> > switching to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal action to get it
> > shut down? Then they'd be stuck.
> OK, I'm not a lawyer. But I would love to see Mickeysquish explain
> how it was perfectly legal for Redmond to steal the Apple Mac look
> and feel (the courts have said so) but illegal for somebody else to
> pull the same trick.
I heard a story from the old days about a Lotus clone written in Forth,
I've forgotten the name now. In the story, when Lotus came out with a
new version the Forth clone put out debugged upgrades while Lotus itself
was still sorting bug reports.
And so Lotus sued them over the user interface and got them shut down.
It wasn't necessarily that they would have lost the lawsuit, it was that
they were a small company that didn't have the resources to spend years
in court. Instead they put their resources into changing the user
interface to something that Lotus wouldn't sue them over, and then they
folded when the users didn't want to switch.
Could these people stay in court long enough for MicroSoft to have to
answer the question why it's different from the Mac situation? If they
ran out of money the first year, the question might never come up. And
if MicroSoft could get an injunction to stop them distributing anything
until the legal issues were resolved....
Stephen Pelc
wrote:
>And so Lotus sued them over the user interface and got them shut down.
>It wasn't necessarily that they would have lost the lawsuit, it was that
>they were a small company that didn't have the resources to spend years
>in court.
insurance company decided it would be cheaper not to continue
to fight the case regardless of the outcome.
Stephen
--
Stephen Pelc, s...@mpeltd.demon.co.uk
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk - free VFX Forth downloads
Jerry Avins
VisiCalc was written in Forth, and preceded Lotus. I think the modified
look and feel came later. In many ways, Lotus was a VisiCalc knockoff.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul E. Bennett
> > I heard a story from the old days about a Lotus clone written in Forth,
> > I've forgotten the name now. In the story, when Lotus came out with a
> > new version the Forth clone put out debugged upgrades while Lotus itself
> > was still sorting bug reports.
> >
> > And so Lotus sued them over the user interface and got them shut down.
> > It wasn't necessarily that they would have lost the lawsuit, it was that
> > they were a small company that didn't have the resources to spend years
> > in court. Instead they put their resources into changing the user
> > interface to something that Lotus wouldn't sue them over, and then they
> > folded when the users didn't want to switch.
> >
> > Could these people stay in court long enough for MicroSoft to have to
> > answer the question why it's different from the Mac situation? If they
> > ran out of money the first year, the question might never come up. And
> > if MicroSoft could get an injunction to stop them distributing anything
> > until the legal issues were resolved....
>
> VisiCalc was written in Forth, and preceded Lotus. I think the modified
> look and feel came later. In many ways, Lotus was a VisiCalc knockoff.
Wasn't it Roeddy Green's package that came under flak. He did BBL and
a spreadsheet programme that was quite blindingly fast at the time
(putting Lotus to shame). I can't remember the name of the spreadsheet.
Jonathan Walther
is well defined, and after you read the right books, it makes
a lot of sense. And its been stable for the last couple decades,
unlike Windows which keeps changing. If you use tcl/tk, its not
even wordy, you can have a complete app in 2-3 lines of code.
Once my own forth is up and running I plan to add some minimal
X protocol support. When you understand where X is coming from,
its damn straightforward.
Jonathan
On 23 Apr 2001, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> In article <3AE1E736...@gmx.de>,
> Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > Don't get me wrong, Windows is ok for people who do no serious work on
> > their PC. But as programmer, Windows is not acceptable.
>
> I don't have too much trouble with Windows NT and W2K. It looks like your
> judgement is based on Windows 3.1 or 95/98, which are indeed slightly less
Jonathan Walther
Such is not the same as "comments" though. I would take
macro-documentation over comments anyday. Given the right
coding style + external documentation, need for comments
goes away entirely. Manpages anyone? Don't clutter your
source. Make it readable.
Jonathan
On 22 Apr 2001, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Apr 2001 22:08:42 GMT, Andreas Klimas wrote:
> >if you ever had contact with Smalltalk you probably know what I
> >mean. you don't need documentation you need good browsers (and
> >well developed code).
>
> Having a document that explains the macroscopic view of a system is
> *invaluable*. Without such a document, anyone who wants to change system
> behavior, or fix bugs, will inevitably end up asking, "Where do I begin?"
>
> Software documentation is *critical*.
Jerry Avins
>
> I agree on the value and necessity of macro-documentation.
> Such is not the same as "comments" though. I would take
> macro-documentation over comments anyday. Given the right
> coding style + external documentation, need for comments
> goes away entirely. Manpages anyone? Don't clutter your
> source. Make it readable.
>
> Jonathan
>
We used to call those manpages "shadow screens".
Jerry
...
Gary Chanson
Jonathan Walther <kro...@debian.org> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.30.010426...@osiris.localnet...
> It is. Programming X using xlib and xt is wordy, but the API
> is well defined, and after you read the right books, it makes
> a lot of sense. And its been stable for the last couple decades,
> unlike Windows which keeps changing.
Windows doesn't keep changing, it keep growing. The two are VERY
different. In actual fact, Windows doesn't change at all. Old functions
don't go away (ever, it seems). They don't even change, even when that
might be desirable. New functions are added, often to fix the problems that
will never be changed in the older functions. Code written for the first
release of Win32 will run on the newest release of Win32 (in almost every
case).
This, by the way, is one of the reasons for Windows' success.
--
-GJC
-gcha...@shore.net
-Abolish Public Schools.
Paul E. Bennett
kro...@debian.org "Jonathan Walther" writes:
> I agree on the value and necessity of macro-documentation.
> Such is not the same as "comments" though. I would take
> macro-documentation over comments anyday. Given the right
> coding style + external documentation, need for comments
> goes away entirely. Manpages anyone? Don't clutter your
> source. Make it readable.
Part of the macro-documentation I would hope is the glossary text for
each and every word in the system. I actually include, with special
comment lines, the glossary text within the source files with the word
definition itself. This makes for easy checking and comparison.
Other comments may be inserted where some of the intent may need to
be explained a little more clearly but that is not too often.
Bruce McFarling
Bennett") wrote:
>Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of a clone, I think
>that KDE is definitely enough look and feel like windows (albeit a few
>small differences) that why most serious people (especially the commercial
>companies) are not switching over is beyond me.
At the University of Newcastle (NSW), its not the windows metaphor
that sticks most people/departments to Windows like glue .... it's
office. The Research branch distributes collated commentaries on
grant proposals in Excel format, as email attachments, and Excel is
only being used to format things in a big table with word wrap inside
each cell ... seminar announcements are distributed as Word files, as
email attachments ... etc.
And as the next generation comes onto people's desks, they distribute
the files in the most recent format, because that's easiest. When
co-coordinating a subject on one of two campuses, I had to have an
upgrade to my Office, because my colleague had a more recent version
of the equation editor in it, etc. etc. etc.
We had a head of school who was a devout Mac person, and as a prof,
she was able to be supported. But when documents came to her
computer, she opened them, and then sent them on, they always came
through mangled. This is a problem that I am sure Microsoft is NOT
unhappy that people have!
(
----------
Virtually,
Bruce McFarling, Newcastle,
ec...@cc.newcastle.edu.au
)
Leonard Zettel
As I recall from accounts at the time, the matter was settled in the courts.
(Or was ruled on by at least one court. Don't know about what
appeal routes, if any, were considered.)
The problem was that the knock-off was set up to have an interface identical
to the 1-2-3 interface, period. There was another product (I believe from
Borland) that offered an *option* to set up an identical interface, and
that was allowed.
-LenZ-
Paul E. Bennett
ec...@cc.newcastle.edu.au "Bruce McFarling" writes:
[%X]
> We had a head of school who was a devout Mac person, and as a prof,
> she was able to be supported. But when documents came to her
> computer, she opened them, and then sent them on, they always came
> through mangled. This is a problem that I am sure Microsoft is NOT
> unhappy that people have!
It is a situation that has been getting me more annoyed with Microsoft
for quite a while. I do not want to update my Microsoft products anymore
but people send documents in the very latest Word format which cannot be
read by the "latest" WordViewer from Microsoft's own site. This confirmed
my decision to ditch Microsoft Windows in any version.
I am in the process of preparing a document submission web-page (a
preliminary one is already on my site - but the proper one will be
there as soon as I finish some cross-reference work on it) which
details the document formats I will accept by email. I am trying to
be as general as possible but I am limiting the number of formats
that will be handled. All this is in preparation for my switch over
to FreeBSD as my main in-house OS. I feel that there are better text
editors, with better control over document construction and management
out there, even if I have to start writing them myself (perhaps a very
Forth like attitude).
I am, by the way, impressed so far with what I have read of XML. I am
working my way through the "The XML Handbook" by Charles F. Goldfarb
and Paul Prescod published by Prentice Hall <http://www.phptr.com/>,
ISBN 0-13-055068-X. The book comes with two CD's on one of which is
a Forth RDF parser tool from ICS-Forth. The tool is intended as an
add-in. There was also an interesting article "XML and Forth" by Les
Kendall in Forthwrite issue 110 (Jan 2001) which should be on the UK
Forth web-site soon. As both Forth and XML are extensible they share
some common attributes.
It is certainly time to think more about what you want to achieve out
of your office environment and to look for new ways of achieving those
aims. You will, I suppose, have to seek out the strengths and weaknesses
of all tools you propose to use and try and get them integrated where
you find them best suited.
Jerry Avins
I had Borland's Quattro Pro, and the option had to be withdrawn. It
passed first to WordPerfect, then to Corel, which still supports it.
Jerry
Jerry Avins
>
> ... I am trying to
> be as general as possible but I am limiting the number of formats
> that will be handled. All this is in preparation for my switch over
I delete without reading HTML email that is not entirely self contained,
almost always before it finishes loading. (Similarly, I hung up the
telephone just now when ten seconds of silence followed "Please hold for
an important message" and a raucous squawk.)
Julian V. Noble
>
> J Thomas wrote:
>
> > "Paul E. Bennett" wrote:
>
> > > Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of
> > > a clone, I think that KDE is definitely enough look and
> > > feel like windows (albeit a few small differences) that
> > > why most serious people (especially the commercial
> > > companies) are not switching over is beyond me.
> >
> > Suppose a significant number of commercial companies
> > started switching to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal
> > action to get it shut down? Then they'd be stuck.
>
> There is nothing in copyright law to stop anyone from writing
> a new program that had the look and feel of Microsoft Windows or
> the look and feel of any other program.
Well, that's not entirely true. Ever heard of VP-Planner? It was
a far better program than Lotus 123, and was--among other
things--
written in Forth. (F-PC, I think, but F83 anyway.) It was faster,
permitted bigger spreadsheets than Lotus, and had many functions
not included in Lotus. Also better graphics.
But the authors made 2 fundamental mistakes:
1. it sold for about 1/3 of Lotus' price;
2. it had the same "look and feel" as Lotus--
deliberately, because no one had ever held
that look and feel was subject to copyright.
And certainly Apple and MS, having copied
the idea of windows cum mouse from Xerox
were in no position to complain.
I should add that there was no code similarity whatever
between LOtus 123 and VP-Planner.
Nevertheless Lotus sued and WON, creating a new precedent,
at least in the 9th District. Brown Bag did not have the
money to pursue the matter to the Supreme Court, so
there it stands. There might be some jurisdictions
where the judges might agree that look and feel are
not subject to copyright protection (as has always been
held with regard to books and similar creative productions
--for example, neither titles nor characters can be copy-
right protected), but I would not want to bet the farm
on that.
> Copyright is for
> copying, not doing something new. If KDE produced displays that
> were exactly the same as what MS-Windows produced, so judges and
> lawyers couldn't tell the difference, then there might be a
> problem.
> So if anybody wants to rewrite Windows in Forth, go do it,
> and don't worry about getting in trouble with look and feel.
>
> --
> Michael Coughlin m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net Cambridge, MA USA
I think Mike is right about the look and feel of Windows, since
it was not originated by Apple or MS, and by now has to be con-
sidered part of the culture. But one never knows what a court
will do--look at the last presidential election.
--
Julian V. Noble
Professor of Physics
j...@virginia.edu
Galileo's Commandment:
"Science knows only one commandment: contribute to science."
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Galileo".
Chris Jakeman
>VisiCalc was written in Forth, and preceded Lotus. I think the modified
>look and feel came later. In many ways, Lotus was a VisiCalc knockoff.
This is news to me. Are you certain?
Bye for now ____/ / __ / / / / /
/ / / _/ / / / /
Chris Jakeman __/ / / __ / / /_/
/ / / / / / / \
[To reply, please __/ __/ ____/ ___/ __/ _\
unspam my address]
Forth Interest Group United Kingdom
Voice +44 (0)1733 753489 chapter at http://forth.org.uk
Bye for now ____/ / __ / / / / /
/ / / _/ / / / /
Chris Jakeman __/ / / __ / / /_/
/ / / / / / / \
[To reply, please __/ __/ ____/ ___/ __/ _\
unspam my address]
Forth Interest Group United Kingdom
Voice +44 (0)1733 753489 chapter at http://forth.org.uk
Jerry Avins
I'm only certain that I was told it a very long time ago. I didn't check
it out myself.
a...@redhat.invalid
: Chris Jakeman wrote:
:>
:> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001 10:15:38 -0400, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:
:>
:> >VisiCalc was written in Forth, and preceded Lotus. I think the modified
:> >look and feel came later. In many ways, Lotus was a VisiCalc knockoff.
:>
:> This is news to me. Are you certain?
: I'm only certain that I was told it a very long time ago. I didn't check
: it out myself.
FAQ author, may we add this?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Dan Bricklin
To: 'Andrew Haley' <a...@cambridge.redhat.com>
Subject: RE: VisiCalc question
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:38:12 -0400
It was written in a 6502 assembler that had macros (Bob wrote the
assembler and linker in PL/I. I wrote our first editor in PL/I for
that system, a Prime 350. Early coding was done using an assembler and
linker written in PL/I that existed on Multics.) Using the macros, Bob
did "structured coding" using "if/then/else" type stuff. I think there
were only a few "goto" branch instructions coded into the whole thing
that weren't in that structured style.
Now, from the Forth viewpoint, what did VisiCalc implement internally?
What was interpreted? It wasn't Forth (which I had experience with at
the time) but the formulas were stored in an
precompiled-into-interpretable form. I don't remember the details --
I'd have to ask Bob. Both of us had lots of experience with
interpreted-from-intermediate code languages. I always viewed
VisiCalc, among other things, being an interpreted language.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks,
Andrew.
James Hague
modified
> :> >knockoff
>:>
> :> This is news to me. Are you certain?
>
It is interesting how many major applications are rumored to be written in
Forth, but weren't. For a long time, popular video games were favorite
examples, but none of them have turned out to be true. Defender, Pac-Man,
Zork, and coin-ops from Atari Games are all incorrect. Zork was the
closest; it was written in a Lispy language that compiled to a stack-based
virtual machine, but it wasn't an honest Forth, per-se.
(There were some commercial games written in Forth, but they're pretty
obscure; nothing that would make someone say "Wow! That used Forth?
Impressive!")
James
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
Robert J. Brown
These guys were at the Rochester Conference in either 1987 or 1990, I
forget which. This is indeed a true story. This is the Forth
spreadsheet. They were from Canada, if I recall correctly.
--
-------- "And there came a writing to him from Elijah" [2Ch 21:12]
--------
R. J. Brown III r...@elilabs.com http://www.elilabs.com/~rj voice 847
543-4060
Elijah Laboratories Inc. 457 Signal Lane, Grayslake IL 60030 fax 847
543-4061
----- M o d e l i n g t h e M e t h o d s o f t h e M i n d
------
Robert J. Brown
>
> J Thomas wrote:
> >
> >
> > > In article <3AE1E736...@gmx.de> bernd....@gmx.de "Bernd
> > > Paysan" writes:
> >
> > > > The reason is that Microsoft wants to
> > > > eliminate any chance that a Windows clone will become available and
> > > > useful.
> >
> > > Whether or not he wanted to eliminate possibilities of a clone, I
> > > think that KDE is definitely enough look and feel like windows
> > > (albeit a few small differences) that why most serious people
> > > (especially the commercial companies) are not switching over is
> > > beyond me.
> >
> > to KDE, couldn't MicroSoft take legal action to get it shut down? Then
> > they'd be stuck.
>
> OK, I'm not a lawyer. But I would love to see Mickeysquish explain how it
> was perfectly legal for Redmond to steal the Apple Mac look and feel
> (the courts have said so) but illegal for somebody else to pull the
> same trick.
Bill Gates' daddy is a very powerful and influential lawyer!
Robert J. Brown
That was the famous Lotus v Borland case, which determined as a point of
the case that user interface cannot be copyrighted. I worked on an
earlier case, Bateland v Mnemonics, which relied on the same point, and
lost in trial, but overturned in appeal. The appeal was after Lotus v
Borland. Borland quoted Bateman v Mnemonics in their defense.
Leonard Zettel
(furiously beating dead horse)...
OK, let's understand we have mentioned several distinct court cases here,
each with its own ruling.
Apple vs. Microsoft, Bateland v Mnemonics, Lotus v Borland, and Lotus
v the (?)Canadians. Care to use your expertise to give a more definitive
summary?
And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
*was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
spreadsheets) was written in Forth. Incidentally, if visi-calc was the
daddy, I worked (early 70s) with what then might be regarded as at least
the step-grandaddy, a mainframe package called Autotab.
-LenZ-
a...@redhat.invalid
: And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
: *was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
: spreadsheets) was written in Forth.
There was, but hopefully that rumour has now died forever.
Andrew.
Jerry Avins
Well, no one will hear it again from me. Sorry!
cLIeNUX user
>
>
>"Robert J. Brown" wrote:
>>
>> Leonard Zettel wrote:
>> >
>> > Stephen Pelc wrote:
>> > >
>>
>(furiously beating dead horse)...
>OK, let's understand we have mentioned several distinct court cases here,
>each with its own ruling.
>Apple vs. Microsoft, Bateland v Mnemonics, Lotus v Borland, and Lotus
>v the (?)Canadians. Care to use your expertise to give a more definitive
>summary?
>And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
>*was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
>spreadsheets) was written in Forth. Incidentally, if visi-calc was the
>daddy, I worked (early 70s) with what then might be regarded as at least
>the step-grandaddy, a mainframe package called Autotab.
> -LenZ-
>
>> --
That's very interesting. How similar to Autotab was Visicalc? I'd always
wondered if the concept had some predecessor.
Rick Hohensee
www.clienux.com
Elizabeth D. Rather
> >And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
> >*was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
> >spreadsheets) was written in Forth. Incidentally, if visi-calc was the
> >daddy, I worked (early 70s) with what then might be regarded as at least
> >the step-grandaddy, a mainframe package called Autotab.
> > -LenZ-
> >
> >> --
>
> That's very interesting. How similar to Autotab was Visicalc? I'd always
> wondered if the concept had some predecessor.
Sorry, I haven't followed this whole thread; I hope someone has mentioned that
the "Canadian effort, which was in Forth," was called VP Planner.
On the subject of ancestors, in the late 60's I used something called
"Omnitab" which worked very much like Visicalc and relatives, though with a
much simpler user interface. All the basic concepts were there, though.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
--
================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather (US & Canada) 800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc. +1 310-491-3356
5155 W. Rosecrans Ave. #1018 Fax: +1 310-978-9454
Hawthorne, CA 90250
http://www.forth.com
"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
================================================
a...@redhat.invalid
: a...@redhat.invalid wrote:
:>
:> Leonard Zettel <zet...@acm.org> wrote:
:> : And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
:> : *was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
:> : spreadsheets) was written in Forth.
:>
:> There was, but hopefully that rumour has now died forever.
: Well, no one will hear it again from me. Sorry!
Hey, it turned out to be wrong, but from my perspective this exchange
has had a positive result: we now know the truth from a real
authority. That's got to be good, right?
Andrew.
Paul E. Bennett
era...@forth.com "Elizabeth D. Rather" writes:
> cLIeNUX user wrote:
>
> > >And BTW, besides the Canadian effort, which was in Forth, there
> > >*was* a separate long-standing rumor that Visi-calc (the daddy of PC
> > >spreadsheets) was written in Forth. Incidentally, if visi-calc was the
> > >daddy, I worked (early 70s) with what then might be regarded as at least
> > >the step-grandaddy, a mainframe package called Autotab.
> > > -LenZ-
> > >
> > >> --
> >
> > That's very interesting. How similar to Autotab was Visicalc? I'd always
> > wondered if the concept had some predecessor.
>
> Sorry, I haven't followed this whole thread; I hope someone has mentioned that
> the "Canadian effort, which was in Forth," was called VP Planner.
Thank's Elizabeth. I knew it was Canadian (Roeddy Green IIRC) but couldn't
think of the name of the package. Now you said the name it has stirred the
memory banks somewhat. Lot's of head-scratching will now cease.
> On the subject of ancestors, in the late 60's I used something called
> "Omnitab" which worked very much like Visicalc and relatives, though with a
> much simpler user interface. All the basic concepts were there, though.
I wonder if it goes back as far as Alan Turing.
Gary Chanson
""Paul E. Bennett"" <p...@amleth.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:988739...@amleth.demon.co.uk...
>
> Thank's Elizabeth. I knew it was Canadian (Roeddy Green IIRC) but couldn't
> think of the name of the package. Now you said the name it has stirred the
> memory banks somewhat. Lot's of head-scratching will now cease.
>
> > On the subject of ancestors, in the late 60's I used something called
> > "Omnitab" which worked very much like Visicalc and relatives, though
with a
> > much simpler user interface. All the basic concepts were there, though.
>
> I wonder if it goes back as far as Alan Turing.
Even in computers, there's "nothing new under the sun".
Leonard Zettel
cLIeNUX user wrote:
(snip)
> >Incidentally, if visi-calc was the
> >daddy, I worked (early 70s) with what then might be regarded as at least
> >the step-grandaddy, a mainframe package called Autotab.
> > -LenZ-
> >
> >> --
>
> That's very interesting. How similar to Autotab was Visicalc? I'd always
> wondered if the concept had some predecessor.
>
Well, it was long ago and far away....
Autotab was designed to run on IBM's RAX (Remote Access System) which used
dumb terminals coming into a 360 mainframe. As I explained its virtue
at the time "It could add across and down."
You edited a description file which described the table layout you wanted
and then asked the machine to give you the resultant sheet. Change any
cell and you could get the whole thing automatically recalculated and
printed your ASR33 in real time. Wonderful! There was provision for
import and export of subsidiary tables. One weekend a bunch of us
engineering computer types essentially took over the system and produced
a set of tables that showed department by department for the whole
company what they had paid for our group's services and what they got
for it. People were impressed.
-LenZ-
> Rick Hohensee
> www.clienux.com
Michael Coughlin
> It is interesting how many major applications are rumored
> to be written in Forth, but weren't. For a long time,
> popular video games were favorite examples, but none of
> them have turned out to be true. Defender, Pac-Man,
> Zork, and coin-ops from Atari Games are all incorrect.
> Zork was the closest; it was written in a Lispy language
> that compiled to a stack-based virtual machine, but it
> wasn't an honest Forth, per-se.
> (There were some commercial games written in Forth, but
> they're pretty obscure; nothing that would make someone
> say "Wow! That used Forth? Impressive!")
The major applications written in Forth are new Forth systems.
The Forth program that has the most number of copies in
existence must be the boot ROM on Sun computers, or maybe the
firmware on some Macintoshes. If somebody could write a good
application in Forth it would be the best indication that Forth
was a language that was worth learning. I wonder why existing
Forth applications all seem to be hiding where few people will
ever see them.
Timothy J. Bruce
Starflight and Starflight 2 were both authored in Forth. All three Star
Control games were authored in C. The StarCon debate wasn't settled until I
contacted Ford (coauthor of the StarCons) himself.
I've heard the rumors of the popular coin-ops being authored in Forth
(embedded is still the most popular use for Forth and Ada) but to my
knowledge no coin-op used Forth code. If anyone here has proof of a coin-op
programmed in Forth I'd certainly like to hear about it.
</RANT>
Gary Chanson
"Michael Coughlin" <m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3AEF8BF7...@ne.mediaone.net...
>
> The major applications written in Forth are new Forth systems.
> The Forth program that has the most number of copies in
> existence must be the boot ROM on Sun computers, or maybe the
> firmware on some Macintoshes. If somebody could write a good
> application in Forth it would be the best indication that Forth
> was a language that was worth learning. I wonder why existing
> Forth applications all seem to be hiding where few people will
> ever see them.
ALL languages are hidden where few people ever see them (and those few
people are the programmers who use them). Application users never see the
underlying language.
And this has VERY little to do with the acceptance of Forth.
Stephen Pelc
<m-cou...@ne.mediaone.net> wrote:
>The major applications written in Forth are new Forth systems.
>The Forth program that has the most number of copies in
>existence must be the boot ROM on Sun computers, or maybe the
>firmware on some Macintoshes. If somebody could write a good
>application in Forth it would be the best indication that Forth
>was a language that was worth learning. I wonder why existing
>Forth applications all seem to be hiding where few people will
>ever see them.
I presume that this is a troll. Both Elizabeth and I have
given details (and sometimes links) to significant Forth
applications in daily use all over the world.
Every day my safety depends on the results of Forth
applications, your car probably has parts formed by Forth
applications, your parcel tracking may well be handled
by data input systems written in Forth, construction
all over the world is planned and monitored by a
Forth application, and ... and ... and ...
Back in the 1980s, people *were* interested in the
programming language an application was written in.
Those were the days when programming was *the*
technical hobby of the time. Those days are past and
very few people are now interested in the language
an application was written in.
What people look for in programming languages are
features and benefits.
James Hague
>
> Starflight and Starflight 2 were both authored in Forth.
Now there's one I hadn't heard, but I could believe it, given the style of
the Starflight games and how much they crammed into small machines. Thanks
for the info!
James Hague
>
> I presume that this is a troll. Both Elizabeth and I have
> given details (and sometimes links) to significant Forth
> applications in daily use all over the world.
I think most people are unfamiliar with behind-the-scenes applications and
are trolling for desktop programs written in Forth. I remember having the
darndest time explaining to people exactly what I did when I wrote software
for telephone exchanges. The usual reasponse, even from programmers, was
"Why do you need computers to control telephones?" When someone says "What
applications are written in Forth?" he or she wants a response like "the
popular game Roller Coaster Tycoon was written in Forth, and so was Excel
[*]." But those kind of examples are hard to come by.
James
[*] Mythical examples. Neither was written in Forth.
Leo Wong and Mary Murphy
> [*] Mythical examples. Neither was written in Forth.
WordPerfect
Michael Coughlin
This has everything to do with the acceptance of Forth. I
would like to remind you of the times we spent years (decades?)
ago with the Boston chapter of fig at various computer trade
shows. We had a radio Shack toy robot connected to a laptop
computer and would interactively write Forth code to make it
dance. How many people would stop at our booth if we did not
have that Forth application program to show them? How many more
would have stopped if we had nice application packages to sell
them? Yes, most computer users might not care what language a
good program was written in, but we are not concerned with the
majority of computer users. We are concerned with the small
minority of computer users who learn to write programs. The
first Astronomical telescope I saw attached to a mini-computer
was controlled and acquiring data with a program written in
Forth. If I didn't see that first application, I would never
have learned anything about Forth. If that program was some sort
of a hidden secret, I wouldn't have learned anything about Forth
either.
Before we had the Forth controlled robot, we had a
discussion about what well known application programs were
written in Forth so we could decorate our computer show booth
with their names. We couldn't think of many (or maybe any at
all). If we had to make up a Forth exhibit for a show today, we
would have the same problem.
Gary Chanson
> Gary Chanson wrote:
>
> > ALL languages are hidden where few people ever see them
> > (and those few people are the programmers who use them).
> > Application users never see the underlying language.
>
> > And this has VERY little to do with the acceptance of
> > Forth.
>
> This has everything to do with the acceptance of Forth. I
> would like to remind you of the times we spent years (decades?)
> ago with the Boston chapter of fig at various computer trade
> shows. We had a radio Shack toy robot connected to a laptop
> computer and would interactively write Forth code to make it
> dance. How many people would stop at our booth if we did not
> have that Forth application program to show them? How many more
> would have stopped if we had nice application packages to sell
> them? Yes, most computer users might not care what language a
> good program was written in, but we are not concerned with the
> majority of computer users. We are concerned with the small
> minority of computer users who learn to write programs. The
> first Astronomical telescope I saw attached to a mini-computer
> was controlled and acquiring data with a program written in
> Forth. If I didn't see that first application, I would never
> have learned anything about Forth. If that program was some sort
> of a hidden secret, I wouldn't have learned anything about Forth
> either.
Those people were a mix of people who were interested in programming and
people who were attracted by the robot, not the programming. And in the
several years that were gave that demo, we only got two or three of those
people to come to our meetings (and none of them came to a second meeting!).
It proves my point.
Stephen Pelc
<james...@volition-inc.com> wrote:
>When someone says "What
>applications are written in Forth?" he or she wants a response like "the
>popular game Roller Coaster Tycoon was written in Forth, and so was Excel
>[*]." But those kind of examples are hard to come by.
850,000+ lines of Forth in these packages.
James Hague
Impressive! I am impressed by the examples of Forth use that I hear about,
but they still all have that "outside the tangible realm" feel to them, so I
can understand why they don't convince many armchair programmers. Perhaps
this is mostly because the consumer-oriented, shrinkwrapped desktop software
market is a small minority of the overall software market.
James
John Passaniti
"Leo Wong and Mary Murphy" <he...@albany.net> wrote in message
news:3AF0C067...@albany.net...
> > [*] Mythical examples. Neither was written in Forth.
>
> WordPerfect
Not that I can find. After doing a search, the only reference I can find to
WordPerfect and Forth is at:
http://www.theforthsource.com/faq4.html
The relevant reference is:
o wpforth v1.0
< ftp://ftp.forth.org/pub/Forth/Reviewed/wpforth.zip> by Albert
Chan is a prototype of a typographical programming system built
around WordPerfect v5.x and Pygmy Forth v1.4. [SJB:950722]
Ultimately, I don't understand why people care at all if there are
well-known applications written in Forth. Do people need such examples to
validate that Forth is a "real" language used in "real" applications? Who
cares?! A programming language is there to help *you* solve problems. The
fact that HappyCalc or FunkyBase or WonderWord was programmed in Forth seems
about as irrelevant as you can get. Knowing that the arcade hit
HyperBlastoMatic '92 was written in Forth tells me nothing more that some
programmer somewhere made a decision to use Forth. As is that was at all
relevant to the problems *you* are trying to solve.
And what does it mean if the application sucks? Let's say that WordPerfect
was indeed written in Forth. I happen to think that WordPerfect (at least
the older MS-DOS versions) is just about the worst editor I've ever used.
Does that mean that Forth suffers the taint of being associated with
WordPerfect?
Leo Wong and Mary Murphy
> news:3AF0C067...@albany.net...
> > > [*] Mythical examples. Neither was written in Forth.
> >
> > WordPerfect
Sorry. I should have written: DataPerfect.
See: http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/
and search Web for: Lew Bastian
J Thomas
> > "Leo Wong and Mary Murphy" <he...@albany.net> wrote in message
> > > > [*] Mythical examples. Neither was written in Forth.
> > > WordPerfect
> Sorry. I should have written: DataPerfect.
> See: http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/
> and search Web for: Lew Bastian
I thought this was a *very* interesting online book. It's worth
discussion beyond the minor mention of Forth in it.
The author was a manager who apparently never learned any programming,
but he learned enough about the topic to describe some of the problems
clearly.
He believed that WordPerfect was superior to all competing products.
Why would it be superior? He attributes that to careful attention paid
to secretaries etc who actually used it. But look a little more
carefully. The first version was written in assembler for Data General
machines only. They went through several rounds of revisions and
improvements etc, all with basically no attention paid to them by any
other word processor developers who happened to be writing for other
machines. So they had a long time to develop in isolation, with a
mostly captive market. Later when they were writing PC software the
competition was much stiffer; other companies tried to copy anything
they did that looked like selling points.
Developing first in a backwater market where nobody noticed them, gave
them a clear advantage. If you have a truly innovative product idea,
perhaps it makes sense to first sell it for Macintosh or Amiga or
PalmPilot, or something more obscure.
They also had the advantage that once businesses that used DG mainframes
started using micros, they naturally tended to want word processors that
were like the ones they were used to. So the company got a cash inflow
that helped them survive mistakes that would have sunk a business that
was less cash-rich. This didn't last of course, but it got them through
some scrapes.
Peterson clearly thought WordPerfect superiority came from their
superior programming informed by their superior communication with end
users. They didn't have to spend much for marketing because they got
such great word-of-mouth. But he attributed WordStar's marketing
success to fanatics. It took so long for people to learn the arcane
WordStar commands that afterward they felt like they'd done something
good so they told their friends it was a great program. He thought it
was crazy -- but WordStar outsold WordPerfect until WordStar management,
worried that their clunky UI would lose them market share, came up with
a new improved WordStar 2000 which was so different that the old
WordStar users didn't want it and neither did anyone else.
I get the impression that for mass markets, what mattered more than
anything else was expert advice. People paid attention to their expert
friends, and they paid attention to media experts. But typically their
friends only *knew* one word processing program. Why buy a second
expensive program? Why spend the sixty or so hours required to get good
at a program, when you already know a program that does everything you
need? People's buddies didn't know which programs were good, they only
knew what they used. And journalists didn't have time to learn 20 or so
programs to nake comparisons, they only looked at the official selling
points, and tried out the special features, and sometimes wrote awful
reviews because they couldn't immediately do something that would be
clear to anybody who spent the second hour learning how. Maybe a whole
lot of marketing success in those days was basically random.
And it was probably the same way with programming languages. I looked
for recommendations for a good scripting language, and some of the
experts (who know multiple scripting languages) say that there isn't
much to choose between Perl, Python, and Tcl. Any of them will do the
job. One will be a little better for one task and a little worse for
another, so that if you want to learn a scripting language to do one
particular application and then never use it again, there might be some
reason to carefully pick one. But pretty much, any of them can do
anything any of the others can. Given that recommendation my natural
instinct was to pick the one with the simplest and most regular syntax
with easy interaction, the one I could learn the fastest. But lots of
people would naturally pick the one that the most others already know,
or the one that the most job ads mention. The more use it gets, the
more new people pick it, until eventually it will become so dominant
that the others aren't considered. (Or something else takes over from
all three of them, something that gets a lot of users suddenly for some
other reason and then builds on that momentum.)
Given languages that are adequate, that it's *possible* to get results
with, it may be mostly historical accident which of them becomes
dominant.
Leo Wong and Mary Murphy
> Ultimately, I don't understand why people care at all if there are
> well-known applications written in Forth. Do people need such examples to
> validate that Forth is a "real" language used in "real" applications? Who
> cares?! A programming language is there to help *you* solve problems. The
> fact that HappyCalc or FunkyBase or WonderWord was programmed in Forth seems
> about as irrelevant as you can get. Knowing that the arcade hit
> HyperBlastoMatic '92 was written in Forth tells me nothing more that some
> programmer somewhere made a decision to use Forth. As is that was at all
> relevant to the problems *you* are trying to solve.
>
> And what does it mean if the application sucks? Let's say that WordPerfect
> was indeed written in Forth. I happen to think that WordPerfect (at least
> the older MS-DOS versions) is just about the worst editor I've ever used.
> Does that mean that Forth suffers the taint of being associated with
> WordPerfect?
I think it depends on the people. I receive letters like the one I got
tonight:
> Thank you for donating wink to the world, it is an excellent little word
> processor. It is great to use software that is fast and user friendly, has
> the major features you need readily accessible without being cluttered up
> with thousands of features you don't need. And it is so small and fast it
> can run off floppy on the oldest PCs and still outstrip Word. And when I
> need to format my documents for final copy printing, the files come into
> Word beautifully.
None of these letters ever ask about the programming language Wink is
written in. If, on the other hand, I had written something of interest
to programmers, they might have wanted to know what language I used.
Leo Wong and Mary Murphy
>
> None of these letters ever ask about the programming language Wink is
> written in. If, on the other hand, I had written something of interest
> to programmers, they might have wanted to know what language I used.
>
I am overtaken by events. My correspondent of last night wrote back in
reply to my acknowledgment of his thanks (in which I don't mention
Forth):
> One interesting aspect of having a word processor as small as wink, is that
> it allows us to have both the document and the editor (and dos) on a single
> floppy. This means we can move from PC to PC without worrying about what
> applications might be available. This is very much in keeping with the
> ideas of object encapsulation, where data is always tied to the code that
> can access and edit it. You have achieved this in forth, but it would be
> ironically very difficult with an object oriented language to create an
> executable small enough to use in this way.
Still, I find that I don't write for the inmates.
J Thomas
> > See: http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/
> > and search Web for: Lew Bastian
> I thought this was a *very* interesting online book. It's worth
> discussion beyond the minor mention of Forth in it.
The founders of WordPerfect had been employees and hadn't liked it.
When the one with business experience tried to set up a traditional
company they got rid of him. Of the three guys remaining, one was a
nice guy who hated to say no to anybody, one took over the european
operations and after awhile they didn't see him much, and the third one
was the author. He struggled to come up with a better business
philosophy, and the company gradually turned into a traditional
business.
They never came up with much of an overall marketing concept. Since at
first they believed in getting people who believed in the company and
letting them do things, they got a lot of people who wanted to do a lot
of things and they let them. Most of that never paid off, but it didn't
cost them much either. They were making enough on WordPerfect that they
could afford some small losses, and they were doing so little management
that it didn't distract them.
They didn't believe in doing much management, at first, but as the
company grew they did listen to project proposals from employees and
sometimes the author said no. This got him some enemies. And this was
the context he mentioned Forth. Somebody came to him with a proposal
for a database engine and he got excited about it. It got funded -- how
could it not, the guy who said no was behind it? The guy wrote it in
Forth, and since they had the Forth compiler they tried selling that
too. DataPerfect never made money but the guy who supported it from the
first says it paid its development costs.
Meanwhile they were porting WordPerfect to every micro that could
support it. The Victor 9000. The DEC Rainbow. The Tandy 2000. Etc.
It was the age of competing micros. The micros that couldn't run a lot
of software died out, but not before trying to get software. "We did
not make a lot of money from these versions, but we did make a lot of
friends." The author often says things like this, with a clear surface
meaning and hidden depths. In the short run the various also-ran
hardware companies helped promote WordPerfect. And when their customers
gave up and bought PCs, they'd naturally want the word processor they
knew. Employees of the defunct companies, particularly the marketing
guys who'd remember them fondly, got jobs all over.
I can see where the idea that WordPerfect was written in Forth might
have come from. They sold a Forth, and they ported to a lot of machines
that weren't worth porting to unless they could do it cheaply. Forth
was a natural for that. And Peterson doesn't really say. He mentions
Forth only in connection with Lew Bastian. But if it got used
elsewhere, would he know? He may have found out about only the things
people came to ask him for funding for. And most of the 50 or so
programmers were working on WordPerfect 3.0. How could a few people do
all that porting? Maybe they did use Forth. But clearly they didn't
all. They tended to get programmers by picking fresh Utah computer
science grads who'd gotten good grades. How many of them would use
Forth? Perhaps one working group of them might, if their team leader
said to. How many team leaders would tell them to? If WP for Atari and
WP for Apple II were in Forth, would the others switch?
Definitely, the early WP for Data General was in DG assembler. And late
WP was not in Forth. And about the time they were doing WP for so many
machines, they had the printer codes hardcoded. It was only with WP 3.0
that they started making files of tables of printer codes so they could
support more printers. Would WP in Forth have the printer codes
hard-coded? Well, maybe. It isn't Forth philosophy but people who're
busy getting products out the door don't always follow Forth
philosophy. And then, if a Forth version used execution tokens etc to
handle that, it might have given somebody the idea.
Peterson isn't our authority that Forth wasn't used in WP, but from what
he says I put the chance at less than 40%.
_______TVD________
In my oppinion there are no significant number of apps to make Linux
useable
at the desktop . It does make a very stable server
No one i know is productive on a desktop using L'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
James Hague
> To me, the differences between Windows and Linux for most desktop uses,
> including programming, are negligible. To get a comfortable Linux
machine,
> you have to do a lot of twiddling and configuring. Windows is the same
way.
> With Perl and a nice command line interface (e.g. 4DOS or 4NT), I don't
see
> a need to quibble about the differences. You could argue that, yes, Linux
> is sometimes more stable, but much of that comes down to your hardware and
> drivers.
Justin Pearson
> Tom Scott wrote
> In my oppinion there are no significant number of apps to make Linux
> useable
> at the desktop . It does make a very stable server
> No one i know is productive on a desktop using L'
Hey,
I write all my documents using Emacs and LaTeX on either a Linux
system or on a sun workstation.
I'm productive enough to have a job.
/Justin
>
--
Justin Pearson - Uppsala Sweden http://www.docs.uu.se/~justin
Samuel A. Falvo II
>> No one i know is productive on a desktop using L'
>Hey,
>I write all my documents using Emacs and LaTeX on either a Linux
> system or on a sun workstation.
Hehe, to say nothing of the fact that I've been using Linux as my desktop
for the last ... six years? Gosh, longer than that it seems.
--
KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447
Samuel A. Falvo II
Oceanside, CA
_______TVD________
> > In my oppinion there are no significant number of apps to make Linux
> > useable
> > at the desktop . It does make a very stable server
> > No one i know is productive on a desktop using L'
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Justin Pearson
> Hey,
> I write all my documents using Emacs and LaTeX on either a Linux
> system or on a sun workstation.
> I'm productive enough to have a job.
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Tom wrote
Well that proves it , LINUX is as capable a workstation as W98 !
All you need is an editor and you qualify .
What have you been smoking ?!