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To: bob who wrote (5180)	8/4/1998 5:41:00 PM
From: Urlman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8581

Hi All..Super Sleuth here checking in: have fun...draw your own conclusions..... _________Cheers...Urlman Found this on the web: forth.com Found this on Usenet: Re: Missing Words From "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> Organization FORTH, Inc. Date Wed, 29 Jul 1998 19:13:52 -0700 Newsgroups comp.lang.forth Message-ID <35BFD6E0.7F1BD05@forth.com> References 1 john wavrik wrote: > > Wil Baden writes, > > Lost Forth Words, Part 1. > > Every attempt to standardize Forth has made it harder to program. > > I miss words I had before The Standard. > > > > Before The Standard I could re-direct input and output. That went > > out with Forth-79 but implementations still let you do it. > > I miss the sense that one can build almost anything. It is not > the omission of a dozen or so top level words -- it is more the sense > that one could easily make whatever one needed. > > Forth words lie in a hierarchy -- something like a tree. There > are a few main branches which ultimately result in secondary branches > and leaves. An attempt to standardize the language too high on the > tree means more details to cope with and less ability to make > changes. It is not just that a few leaves may have been left out this > time -- which we can paste on next time. It means that one must now > cope with the language by trying to cope with the description of the > high level words -- rather than just understand the lower level words > used to create them. > >... > I think that the most important impact of ANS Standards is not > "missing words" but being deprived of the sense that you can do almost > anything in Forth. Hello, John... I know we had this debate years ago when the standardization process was happening. Now we can look back from a number of years' experience with the consequences and, I think, speak a little more confidently. Previous standards imposed a very rigid model on Forth: 16-bit cells, indirect-threaded implementation. Even in 1983, many systems didn't use that model. In surveys done by the TC early on, we found that most systems on the market were non-Forth83-standard. By 1994, relatively few did. Today, the vast majority of Forths (at least based on systems in use) are 32-bit implementations, and many fewer are indirect-threaded. We have shifted to almost exclusive use of subroutine-threaded implementations, which turn out to be 4x faster and, in some cases, even smaller. Most of the discomfort you feel stems from the loss of this fixed model -- but, knowing today's market, I am confident that had Forth remained tied to the old implementation scheme it would be dead today. I know FORTH, Inc. and MPE (today's two main vendors) would be out of business, and the apparently thriving Linux/Unix systems couldn't be standard. Support for Forth chips such as Patriot Scientific's ShBoom (for which we're developing a target for our SwiftX cross-compiler) would have to choose between being non-standard (and un-salable) or slow and awkward to the point of defeating the whole purpose of using a Forth chip. Instead, Forth survives as an active (though minority) language. You felt confident that you could do what you wanted because you knew the insides of the systems you were running on. But then, as now, if you did those things they weren't portable, because lots of systems didn't work the way you expected. Providing you have the same level of information about the systems you're running on, you can do the same things today, equally easily and equally portably (not!). You don't have to feel guilty about being non-standard; it's a viable choice. The difference ANS Forth made was to define the areas that could be guaranteed portable and those that couldn't. It also provided portable ways to do a lot of things that _couldn't_ be done portably in the 80's. I didn't agree with all the things the committee did, but we've implemented and used all of them. On the whole, the effect has been very positive, both technically and commercially. The standard wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good, and we're here today because of that. Cheers, Elizabeth -- =============================================== 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 forth.com "Forth-based products and Services for real-time applications since 1973." ===============================================