Acme 0.94 in the works?

BLuRry

unread,

Mar 14, 2012, 12:42:37 PM3/14/12

to

I went on the hunt and found Acme Cross-assembler was registered by its original author, Marco Baye, in Sourceforge! The last release was a prerelase of 0.93 several years ago. I found in the source checkin the comments indicate 0.94.2!

It could be very exciting if Marco resumes the development of Acme, I always preferred this assembler because of its very nice macro language support.

I didn't see any builds posted in the download section, but here's source:

https://sourceforge.net/p/acme-crossass/code-0/5/tree/

Project wiki (nothing there currently as of 3/14/2012): https://sourceforge.net/p/acme-crossass/wiki/Home/
Old site (last updated 2006): http://www.esw-heim.tu-clausthal.de/~marco/smorbrod/acme/

-Brendan

Egan Ford

unread,

Mar 18, 2012, 3:00:19 PM3/18/12

to

What other 65816 cross-assemblers are others using for IIgs development?

Daniel Kruszyna

unread,

Mar 20, 2012, 7:06:47 PM3/20/12

to

Egan Ford <data...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What other 65816 cross-assemblers are others using for IIgs development?

I wrote one to make TreeHugger. Do you like Forth-style assemblers?

-- Daniel

Egan Ford

unread,

Mar 21, 2012, 1:36:47 PM3/21/12

to

I like Forth. Cannot say I 'like' or dislike Forth-style assemblers,
but I'll give it a shot.

Michael J. Mahon

unread,

Mar 22, 2012, 1:45:57 PM3/22/12

to

You're already unusual--most people fall into either the "love it"
or "hate it" categories with regard to Forth. ;-)

-michael

DMS Drummer--an Apple II rhythm section!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."

Egan Ford

unread,

Mar 22, 2012, 2:27:41 PM3/22/12

to

I lean to love it. Being raised on RPN calculators, Forth seems
natural. RPN/Forth thinking also comes in handy when outputting
Postscript. :-)

Here is the last Apple Forth (MAF) program I wrote:

http://jerkwerks.com/misc/apple_forth_pi.html

Forth is quite portable. I originally wrote that program with gforth,
then ported to the HP 71B, then the //e. And Forth is fast.

Lately I've started loving 6502 ASM. After about 4 months of playing
with it, I think it will be my only 6502 programming language. But I do
miss the Forth stack and stack control. It shouldn't be difficult to
implement in 6502 for "the stack".

Michael J. Mahon

unread,

Mar 22, 2012, 3:33:23 PM3/22/12

to

Forth *is* fast compared to the alternatives. Threaded code is a
nice space/time tradeoff. And it's hard to beat the simplicity of
the Forth execution model (except, maybe, 6502 assembly ;-).

There's no question, though, that RPN and the implicit stack operands
make readability of Forth programs problematic. You have to be in
"Forth execution mode" in your mind as you read to see what's being
operated on.

Another language that had this characteristic was APL. Amazingly
succinct programs that did wondrous computations, but demanded of
any reader great mental elasticity.

I've seen both languages referred to as "write only". ;-)

> Lately I've started loving 6502 ASM. After about 4 months of playing
> with it, I think it will be my only 6502 programming language. But I do
> miss the Forth stack and stack control. It shouldn't be difficult to
> implement in 6502 for "the stack".

I also enjoy programming in 6502 assembly. It's a cozy, straightforward
world, and you can go as fast as the machine allows. ;-)

Like Forth, it encourages one to write in terms of small subroutines.
Unlike Forth, almost all the context relevant to a chunk of code is
in just three registers, so it's pretty easy on readers.

And it provides complete freedom in data structures, allowing optimal
algorithms. I don't know any other language that would let me store
an array of 16-bit numbers as two arrays of 8-bit halves--and get the
benefit of so doing--without looking like Greek. ;-)

-michael

NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!