Request: FORTH (or basic compiler) for Apple IIe
Philip Budne
apple II but finds basic too slow (big surprise).
What are some forths for the apple and their pros/cons/prices.
Or alternatively a compiler for basic.
Thanks
Phil Budne
Boston University / Distributed Systems
Philip Budne
Steve Schlaifer x43171 301/167
> What are some forths for the apple and their pros/cons/prices.
You can get documentation and/or source code for a Forth 79 implementation
from Mountain View Press. If money is tight, you can buy a listing of
the source and type it in by hand. Alternatively, you can also get the code
on disk. The Mountain View Press code has been released into the public domain
so there are no problems with copying, selling or whatever you want to do.
They advertise regularly in Byte among other places. Prices run in the $20
area.
--
...smeagol\ Steve Schlaifer
......wlbr->!jplgodo!steve Advance Projects Group, Jet Propulsion Labs
....logico/ 4800 Oak Grove Drive, M/S 301/165F
Pasadena, California, 91109
+1 818 354 3171
Jeff Loucks
> Xref: slovax net.lang.forth:140 net.micro.apple:652
I've gotten good FORTH stuff from:
Mountain View Press
PO Box 4656
Mountain View, CA 94040
(415) 961-4103
They've got production compilers (price varies), FIG (FORTH Intereset Group)
implementations (about $15), along with an assortment of manuals, guides
and documents.
A friend of mine has a trick FORTH for Apples including a symbolic (a little
guy on the screen moving registers and memory pictures) debugger. Respond
via mail if interested, and I'll get you in touch with him.
Hope this helps.
==============================================================================
This should say something brilliant, but it's monday morning. nuf said.
Jeff Loucks
The brilliant thing I should have said is my address:
uw-beaver!tikal!slovax!jeff
-or-
Jeff Loucks
c/o RDA
3625 Perkins Lane, S.W.
Tacoma, WA 98499
(206) 581-1322
===============================================================================
Something else brilliant should be here, but I won't push my luck.
The Doctor
Paul Lutus, I believe has put out a version of FORTH called graForth. As
The name implies, it is a graphics-oriented package. It seems to be pretty
well put together, but might not be able to provide the speed you need.
You might try asking the company for some benchmarks.
Most BASIC compilers advertise that they can produce code up to 2 to 20
times as fast. My own experience is that the new code becomes faster in
inverse proportion to how well you wrote the original code. Sloopy code
can be sped up quite a bit. Very tight original code can't.
I wrote a 27 line non-recursive solution to the knight's tour problem in
BASIC (purely as a mental exercise) in very efficient code. It moved at
a pretty fair clip. The compiled code went about 2-3 times as fast.
As a final task, I wrote the same code, using the same technique and style
in assembly language and was left with a program that was about 1/2 the size
in bytes, of the original BASIC, and about 1/8 the size of the compiled code
(including its libraries), and as a final note, it went 400 times faster
than the compiled code. Yes, that's right, 400. The reason for that is the
style of programming used for array addressing, and the output in assembly
language was far more efficient.
Oh, forgot to mention, graForth does not support floating point arithmetic.
If you can stomach assembly language, its the only way you'll get top
speed. Forth is fairly swift. Th BASIC compilers will offer you a way
to translate what you already have into inefficient assembly language at the
cost of space.
Steve Hawley
joevax!sdh