00:00:00 --- log: started forth/02.01.09 15:20:12 --- join: I440r_ (mark4@pool-63.52.218.20.ipls.grid.net) joined #forth 16:00:43 --- quit: I440r_ (Read error: 113 (No route to host)) 17:52:06 --- join: tcn (tcn@65.170.209.18) joined #forth 17:52:10 --- part: tcn left #forth 19:48:38 --- join: Xuz (aemerson@bgp01079860bgs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net) joined #forth 19:48:49 --- mode: ChanServ set mode: +o Xuz 20:14:49 --- join: futhin (thin@h24-66-212-245.cg.shawcable.net) joined #forth 20:14:53 hi all 20:15:00 hi xuz 20:38:06 hi 20:38:14 Hiya 20:38:19 hey 20:38:23 so you code forth? :) 20:38:43 Yep. 20:38:48 And a bunch of other stuff, too. 20:38:58 got any forth projects? 20:39:08 Nope, not at the moment. 20:40:29 i have a forth mud project :) 20:40:35 hm, i'm doing something, brb in 10 mins 20:42:04 Okay. 20:42:36 ok 20:42:38 back 20:42:46 so i'm fairly new to forth 20:42:54 discovered forth about 8 months ago 20:43:31 Good :) 20:43:46 thru MUF (multi-user forth) which is a forth-like online programming language for TinyMUCK.. do you know about MUDs? 20:44:02 I know about MUDs as well as MUCKs. 20:44:05 * Xuz plays on a TinyMUCK in fact. 20:44:26 ahh 20:44:34 so you are familiar with MUF :) 20:44:54 Somewhat. I don't have a MUCKer bit anywhere, but I can read the stuff and I could learn to write it in a day. 20:45:07 probably less than a day :) 20:45:37 it's barely any different, except you can store strings on the stack, which is kinda nice :) 20:45:55 * Xuz nodnods 20:46:02 And drop is renamed 'pop' 20:46:10 * Xuz afks 20:46:31 i've got a lot of great forth ideas, but i'm a huge procrastinator :( 20:50:22 one of my really cool ideas is to create an interactive collaborative forth universe (online) so that forth coders can all hang out in this universe, and also do coding in it, and everybody can participate in all the different projects that forth coders start. 20:50:53 it would be very handy in that it would promote coding, and over come procrastination (mine, and some other forth coders i know) 21:00:49 * Xuz unafks 21:00:56 * Xuz laughs and is also a procrastinator 21:02:11 You're thinking of something similar to TinyMUCK but with a more true-to-form variant of Forth? 21:02:59 * Xuz has great respect for Revar/Foxen/Mattfox. Just because MPI seems like LISP (kind of) MUF is Forth (almost) and then going off and writing a client in TCL/Tk. 21:04:56 yeah sorta, but have you tried any collaborative editors or workspaces? 21:05:33 Nope. Never had the opportunity. 21:06:31 i'm thinking along the line of a collaborative editor, where forth coders can code collaboratively and see each other coding.. 21:07:59 i really liked MUF. one of the things i liked was that I could type MUF and get quick help on the primitives. it annoys me that other forth implementations don't have a help or man command. FPC has help, but it pops up this other window, which is a bother. i like my help in the same window :) 21:08:40 * Xuz laughs 21:08:41 pfe has it. 21:08:44 Wel, sort of. 21:08:52 It'll show you exceprts from the standard on whatever word. 21:09:01 Though as you get into Forth more in-depth you'll need that less. 21:13:24 how so? 21:13:35 need help less or need excerpts lesS? 21:14:59 Need help on the individual words less. 21:16:07 because i can use SEE, etc? 21:16:58 Yes. And most of them will become as natural as "+" is now. 21:17:09 yeah 21:17:25 forth isn't really friendly to new comers at all 21:17:51 after i discovered MUF i did a search on the net for resources on forth. i was strongly disappointed. 21:18:15 Well, it's not as popular as things like C or Visual Basic. 21:18:22 What're you trying to find? 21:18:41 and i've barely done any coding in forth at all, it's probably because it's not exactly user-friendly. 21:18:58 Languages aren't ever user-friendly :) 21:19:14 And. . . there's a difference between user-friendly and novice-friendly. If you're a user it assumes you use it regularly. 21:19:26 novice-friendly then 21:19:55 but user-friendly also has a component of intuitiveness. and if it is intuitive, then it is novice-friendly :) 21:19:56 What're you having trouble with? I can try to explain. 21:20:10 It's intuitive :) It just depends on your intuition. 21:20:39 * Xuz grins, "In fact, I think Forth appeals to the Jungian function of Intuition more than C or VB do :)" 21:21:07 Anyway. I'll try to be helpful from now on instead of smart-alecky. 21:21:17 not in terms of USING the forth implementation, not in terms of starting with no knowledge of forth, loading up forth, and trying to figure it out from there. 21:21:48 Which things are you stuck on? 21:22:18 i'm not really having trouble with anything. it's just when i open up a forth program (or any program, such as squeak or something), i expect to be able to blunder around and get a feel for it quickly, and get some decent help! MUF and TinyMUCK did a _GOOD_ job on that, the help system was clear and understandable 21:22:32 and easily accessed within the interface 21:23:40 * Xuz nodnods 21:23:53 MUDs have good help systems, they HAVE to, because a lot of newbies are always coming on and trying to blunder around and figure things out. unfortunately, for people and for the forth community, there doesn't really seem to be any good help system with any of the forths, nor is there a good forth help system and community online 21:24:09 When I was learning Forth at first I read a couple tutorials, and had a copy of the Draft Standard in another window. 21:24:54 the forth community is not growing because 1) no consistent help system, interface, online help system/community. 2) no standardization, lack of some features ppl expect, etc.. 21:25:29 xuz: yeah, i did the same, except i went and got starting forth from my library 21:25:54 Well, there is an online community. There's the Forth Interest Group, not to mention comp.lang.forth. It's small, but it's there, and most people in it try to be pretty helpful. And there IS standardization, the ANS Forth Standard of 199whatever. 21:26:00 the only forth program i've done to date is a program that takes a number and prints a pyramid of asterisks with the number of rows 21:26:16 Ahh. My library didn't have starting forth, I started out with Thinking Forth. 21:26:45 xuz: i'm getting thinking forth from an interlibrary loan 21:26:52 in 4 to 6 weeks, yay :P 21:27:44 I'm curious, what kind of help-system do you think would be necessary, and what kind of 'features people expect' does it lack? 21:27:58 comp.lang.forth and #forth are all nice and everything. but the resources online is really poor. there's very little forth code, etc 21:28:27 the community is less important than having resources online, code, help, tips & tricks, etc 21:29:08 Well, there is code. Taygeta has almost every free Forth program there is. 21:29:28 And. . . . . there's also the Forth Webring, which might have something useful to you on it. 21:31:35 hm, i'll answer the second part first. people expect standardization, and a higher-level of forth, and some weirdos want OOP :P 21:31:45 "We have standardization. 21:31:52 * Xuz grumbles, been MUCKing too much. 21:31:56 And. . . we have OOP. 21:32:15 not really, ANS Standard is pretty low-level and apparently quite crappy 21:32:18 ANd you can make Forth as high-level as you like. It has a very powerful degree of abstraction, alot more than C, for example. 21:32:24 i know that 21:32:45 but each forth coder practically has to code in all the high-level stuff himself 21:33:05 mrreach said a standard library with all the high-level stuff would work 21:33:09 Well, you can get objects on your own. Though there are some things that would be nice. 21:33:15 (or could possibly work) 21:33:21 Err, you can get objects NOT on your own. 21:36:31 what little history I know about forth is this: when the programmers made up fig-forth and as well as forth-79 and 83, they actually focused more on keeping it low-level, in the spirit of letting the coder extend the forth himself, because that is a big part of the forth philosophy. apparently they did not want to hinder the programmer in being able to extend the implementation himself. 21:36:59 today, forth implementations are starting to go beyond that, i.e, they aren't limiting themselves to low-level. 21:37:23 however, i think they are carrying too much cargo with them.. 21:37:30 and becoming somewhat bloated 21:37:37 Oh? Like what? 21:38:07 i dunno, i'm thinking of win32forth and gforth 21:38:27 Never played with Win32Forth. I wouldn't consider GForth bloated, except that it's written in C. 21:40:10 win32forth doesn't feel like a clean implementation to me, and it's actually very slow. gforth is probably not clean either, but probably better implemented than win32forth in some ways. altho gforth seems limited.. and a bit of a hack :/ 21:41:03 i need to learn more forth, maybe i'll think differently later. 21:41:22 except the win32forth code that i looked at is hideously ugly 21:41:29 doesn't factor enough :( 21:41:54 Well, GForth's main limitation is that interfacing to libraries is a pain. I have some code to make it easier, though. 21:42:16 At least to me :) 21:42:17 our god, chuck moore, said "thou shalt factor" and tim zimmings (sp?) 21:42:20 failed 21:42:25 to factor properly 21:42:50 Who's Tim Zimmings? 21:43:15 the guy who coded fpc and win32forth? 21:43:18 i forget his name 21:43:22 i might've fudged it 21:44:04 i have a project to code a MUD in forth, i'm doing it in gforth. i'm at the point where i need to interface with the library to do the port stuff. so i put it on hold because i'm too lazy to look at the documentation heh :) 21:44:19 Err. . . 21:44:21 there isn't any. 21:44:26 if your code makes it easier to interface, maybe you can help me :P 21:44:31 yeah 21:44:33 Oh, I can :) 21:44:44 I just don't have it, it's on my mother computer. 21:44:58 yeah, well, mrreach sort of explained how to do it to me, and it's on a log somewhere 21:45:15 and there's the sample code that came with gforth 21:45:25 and i think one of them does interface with the libraries or something 21:45:50 Well, yes, but I like my way better. I used it to get curses working. 21:46:07 It's basically just a bunch of CREATE/DOES> definitions. 21:46:21 In the LONG run I'd like to get an equivalent to Perl's h2ph that would do an h2fs, but that'd take a while :) 21:46:37 h2ph? h2fs? 21:47:11 h2ph is something that comes with perl that reads a header file and tells Perl how to interface with the library. 21:47:32 Something that would read the prototypes and typedefs from a header file and turn them into things Forth could use would be nifty. 21:47:37 ah 21:47:45 yeah 21:48:40 And the translation is relatively straightforward, so it should be a perfectly good candidate for mechanization. 21:49:35 do you want to send me the library interface code? just in case you aren't around when i finally get around to getting back on my MUD project :) 21:50:27 I don't have it on this computer, unfortunately. 21:50:38 oh right 21:50:46 how about i give you my email address? 21:50:58 jbrobey@yahoo.com 21:51:31 Excellent. I'll give you an email when my other computer's fixed. 21:51:40 I'm still curious what other high-level features you'd suggest :) 21:51:45 or you could give me your email address, and i can email you when i get back on the forth mud project.. :) 21:52:21 That'd work, too. 21:52:23 xuz: hm, well i did a rant on it awhile ago, but i forget some of the features i suggested.. i'm tired and it is my bedtime 21:52:25 Mine is acemerson@mediaone.net 21:52:55 Wel. . .actually that one's going away. 21:52:58 Try aemerson@atdot.org 21:54:11 * Xuz afks 21:54:30 hm 21:54:32 i'm going to bed 21:54:56 talk to you later, and maybe i'll think up the high-level features.. 21:55:24 good night 21:55:31 --- quit: futhin ("sleep") 22:39:35 * aaronl is back (gone 28:26:32) 22:39:47 * aaronl is away: I'm busy 23:19:32 --- quit: Xuz ("ircII EPIC4-0.9.16 -- Are we there yet?") 23:59:59 --- log: ended forth/02.01.09