Forth vs C
I am really glad to hear that you have so much experience with Forth. I
can understnad how the lack of standard IO made you turn away from Forth to
C. Forth is still in its infancy and the standards are not YET there. I
hope to change that. That is partially why I started this discussion. When
more than one company supports a more complete Forth, I really think you
will see alot more development done in the language. Which brings me to
the question, "would you be willing to disclose the name and address of
your friend on the IEEE Forth standard's committee?" I would like to
whisper a few things in that body's ears. If not, is there a way for the
common man to bring up suggestions to that committee?
Double precision (64 bit) fixed point operators is one thing that MF
doesn't have on the Amiga that I am working on right now. This will
increase your dynamic range from 4.295 E+09 to 1.845 E+19. That's ten
billion times the resolution. This task should not be any more difficult
(or slow) than doing 16 bit fixed point Forth on 8 bit machines that don't
have "word" operators. This still doesn't take care of your need for
multiple compilers.
Interestingly, the "to be completed next year" program that I have only
started on is a CAD program in Forth. I own Aegis Draw Plus, but it is too
buggy for the work I am involved with. Perhaps I expected too much, but I
am trying to use it in an industrial control market where I currently have
some two to three hundred prints that I (and coworkers) need to store and
keep updated. I have dug in and refused to buy an I*M and AutoCAD (nice),
so I must now work on my own CAD program. I hope that I haven't bitten off
more than I can chew! Before I give up on Draw+, I bought my copy in
November of '87. Have there been any real additions (even bug squashes)
since then?
Thank you for all of your comments. Those of us that are sticking with the
language (fanatics, if you will) hope to make the compiler and standards
people catch up to what are needs are real soon now. It won't happen
tommorow, but we keep at it. I hope, when that day comes, you'll come back
and Forth with us.