00:00:00 --- log: started forth/09.03.08 00:20:26 --- join: warpzero (n=warpzero@twink.obsoleet.org) joined #forth 01:02:03 --- join: workthrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 01:26:34 --- join: GeDaMo (n=gedamo@dyn-62-56-68-78.dslaccess.co.uk) joined #forth 03:28:23 --- join: _workthrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 03:28:41 --- quit: workthrick (Read error: 131 (Connection reset by peer)) 03:29:27 --- quit: mathrick (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 03:29:39 --- join: mathrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 03:34:49 --- quit: _workthrick (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) 03:35:32 --- join: _mathrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 03:37:04 --- join: _workthrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 03:37:06 --- quit: mathrick (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 03:54:00 --- join: kar8nga (n=kar8nga@e-115.vc-graz.ac.at) joined #forth 04:54:11 --- quit: _workthrick (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) 04:56:32 --- quit: _mathrick (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 05:03:36 --- join: workthrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 05:03:43 --- join: mathrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 05:06:32 --- quit: GeDaMo ("Leaving.") 05:48:53 --- quit: kar8nga (Remote closed the connection) 07:18:16 --- quit: workthrick (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) 07:20:13 --- join: edrx (i=edrx@189.25.47.16) joined #forth 07:31:52 --- join: sunwukong (n=vukung@125-14-81-151.rev.home.ne.jp) joined #forth 08:07:49 --- mode: ChanServ set -o tathi 08:08:46 --- quit: sunwukong (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 08:12:41 --- join: sunwukong (n=vukung@125.14.81.151) joined #forth 08:43:15 --- quit: sunwukong ("bye") 09:14:39 --- join: iano (n=iosgood@076-076-146-052.pdx.net) joined #forth 09:33:51 --- join: JasonWoof (n=jasonwoo@c-66-31-44-71.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) joined #forth 09:33:51 --- mode: ChanServ set +o JasonWoof 09:38:33 --- part: harry__ left #forth 09:40:08 --- join: GeDaMo (n=gedamo@dyn-62-56-68-78.dslaccess.co.uk) joined #forth 09:49:24 --- join: qFox (i=C00K13S@132pc222.sshunet.nl) joined #forth 10:40:06 --- join: LOOP-HOG (n=jasondam@97-115-75-67.ptld.qwest.net) joined #forth 11:27:07 --- quit: mathrick ("HULK ANGRY! HULK DISCONNECT!") 11:28:31 --- join: kar8nga (n=kar8nga@e-244.vc-graz.ac.at) joined #forth 11:29:34 --- join: mathrick (n=mathrick@users177.kollegienet.dk) joined #forth 11:42:42 --- join: malyn_ (n=malyn@unaffiliated/malyn) joined #forth 11:46:16 --- quit: malyn (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 11:46:41 --- nick: malyn_ -> malyn 12:14:08 --- quit: manuel_ (calvino.freenode.net irc.freenode.net) 12:14:08 --- quit: Quartus` (calvino.freenode.net irc.freenode.net) 12:14:10 --- quit: luis (calvino.freenode.net irc.freenode.net) 12:15:10 --- join: Quartus` (n=Quartus`@207.245.250.60) joined #forth 12:15:10 --- join: manuel_ (n=manuel@hygiene.bl0rg.net) joined #forth 12:15:10 --- join: luis (n=user@r42.eu) joined #forth 12:16:20 --- join: ASau (n=user@193.138.70.52) joined #forth 12:17:24 --- part: ASau left #forth 12:23:44 --- join: Quartus (n=neal@CPE001b115d994a-CM001947482b20.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) joined #forth 12:24:03 --- mode: ChanServ set +o Quartus 12:51:40 --- quit: qFox ("Time for cookies!") 12:55:14 --- join: qFox (i=C00K13S@132pc222.sshunet.nl) joined #forth 12:56:36 --- nick: schme -> schmx 13:58:30 --- quit: GeDaMo ("Leaving.") 14:28:13 --- join: snowrichard (n=snowrich@12.169.182.169) joined #forth 14:31:51 --- quit: snowrichard (Client Quit) 14:32:01 --- join: Wills (n=user@host81-129-71-198.range81-129.btcentralplus.com) joined #forth 14:32:38 Hello 14:33:20 --- part: edrx left #forth 14:33:21 Wills: hi 14:34:24 Just saw the post on c.l.f so thought I would drop in and say hi. Never actually used an IRC client before so it took a minute to figure it out! Simple enough though! 14:35:13 Anyone know if the ANS spec is downloadable as a PDF anywhere? 14:37:13 http://www.quartus.net/files/PalmOS/Forth/Docs/dpans94.pdf 14:37:44 Thank you CRC... downloading now...! 14:37:50 no problem 14:42:41 So, whats the general consensus here regarding Forth? I've been studying it as a language and philosophy for a few months now. I am currently of the opinion that it shines as a single user development language (i.e. one developer, not a team) for small projects (embedded etc). For large enterprise projects, I'm currently more persuaded by other languages such as VB and Java. 14:43:21 It allows a single developer to reach very high levels of productivity very quickly. 14:44:03 And the beauty is the simplicity of Forth and it's compiler. It really is the most amazing language. 14:44:38 I enjoy writing small things in it 14:44:41 --- join: H4ns3 (n=hans@p57A0FAF8.dip.t-dialin.net) joined #forth 14:45:07 --- quit: H4ns (Nick collision from services.) 14:45:09 --- nick: H4ns3 -> H4ns 14:45:11 I've done a little serious coding, but most of my forth code is written for my own use. 14:46:50 Interesting. I suspect that is what most people are using Forth for. The simplicity of the compiler means it's very easy to write your own compiler to work exactly how you want it to. It kind of goes against the idea of a standard. 14:47:16 In my opinion, it is a criminal act that Forth isn't taught in every university EE program 14:47:58 I've written a few implementations of Forth, but only two have been publicly released, and only one of those is actively being used 14:47:59 Currently, I'm not persuaded by the idea of an ANS standard for Forth. I kind of agree with Chuck Moore - Forth systems should be just what *YOU* want them to be, to do what you want them to do, how you want to do it Forth is freedom. 14:48:09 I've seen literally dozens of man-years wasted trying to get C toolchains working on various embedded systems 14:50:17 I agree Iano - 100%. Imagine the 'wow' factor when the students suddenly understood how forth works (ITC etc). I remember when I started to understand the language and how it works, it was a *massive* "OH WOW" moment! I thought it was so clever, and simple, it was almost beautiful! 14:51:05 Willis: yes, clever and simple, and small and understandable 14:51:19 Yeah - C toolchains - when you can write a very useable Forth system in 4K 14:51:24 Wills: and once understood, easily applied to other architectures 14:52:04 I mean, Forth was birthed by Chuck porting it to dozens of systems 14:52:26 all that experience went into the underlying design 14:53:43 i like the notion of forth being a scriptable monitor for embedded systems. with cross compile based toolchains, you don't get any interactivity unless you program a monitor first, and you'll waste a lot of time doing so. with forth, you can interactively diagnose, write automated diagnostics and write applications all in the same environment. 14:54:23 I have shown some people FORTH at work (all C++ guru's), and, much to my surprise, most of them were pretty impressed. One guy saw the potential of Forth for parsing text files almost immediately. He was very impressed. It really is a shame that most people no nothing about it. I always used to tell people how crap Forth is, until one day I sat down and studied it a little! 14:54:25 --- join: k (n=kar8nga@j-166.vc-graz.ac.at) joined #forth 14:54:48 --- quit: kar8nga (Nick collision from services.) 14:54:51 --- nick: k -> kar8nga 14:55:07 --- quit: kar8nga (Remote closed the connection) 14:56:26 one of the reasons that the OLPC platform came together so quickly was that they hired Mitch Bradley to do the firmware 14:56:47 Thats what interests me embedded applications seems like the perfect fit for Forth. However, I think it could also have value for use inside other applications; when your application needs a programmable language of it's own (like a Macro language) then a FORTH, or a subset, would be quite easy to code. 14:57:01 first thing he did was port his OpenFirmware to the platform, so they could quickly debug all the hardware 14:57:17 Wills: "quite easy" is still very complex to some people, given the invisibility of the stack. 14:57:21 Wills: yeah, like FICL 14:57:28 I'm thinking about a java application with a built in Forth scripting language at the moment. Being Java hosted, it would be Token threaded probably. 15:02:29 I think of the standard with a couple of "ifs" attached -- if your system provides a particular functionality, you sorta might as well give it the standard name and behavior, unless you have a good reason to do otherwise...*if* you want people to be able to follow your code as easily as possible, or run their code on your system 15:02:35 that sort of thing 15:03:56 Tathi: Yeah, I guess so - however, I think most Forth code runs on embedded systems these days, so it tends to be custom written for the project 15:05:00 Yes, I heard about the OLPC - it has a Forth system in there somewhere right? Perhaps the children of the third world will become Forth experts? And why not I suppose - Its easy to learn and requires minimal hardware. Perfect. 15:05:02 Well, sure, if you're doing custom stuff, obviously you go with whatever you're comfortable with. 15:05:42 Yeah, OpenFirmware is Forth-based. 15:06:23 I dunno how many people will actually muck around with it, but the OLPC folks seem much more up front about it than Apple was. 15:07:54 Apple? 15:09:10 PPC macs used openfirmware 15:10:42 x86 ones use...what's it called? EFI or something 15:10:43 bleh 15:12:48 Ah ok. It's kind of a shame that it's not used more. I've been dreaming about a forth based OS for a while but I dont think i will ever have the time to develop something like that. I think its performance on modern hardware would be pretty special though, especially written with something like VFX Forth, Swift or GForth (all compile to machine code)... 15:15:07 Wills: colorForth is that OS 15:15:36 Hah! Was just going to mention colorForth. 15:15:57 Wills: my retro forth used to run as an OS 15:18:22 It would have to be changed to gain acceptance first though: I think (respectfully) that Chuck is a little eccentric, and some of this eccentricity, especially his passion for minimal "everthing" shows through: The Dvorak keyboard is one thing. That would have to go, and the screen resolution would need to be increased (I heard it is low resolution because Chucks eyesight is not so good, so he's comfortable with big chunky tex 15:18:22 t!) Gotta love the guy! 15:18:54 CRC: Can you tell me a little more? On what hardware? What were the capabilities of the OS? 15:19:37 wills: standard x86 hardware, had keyboard, text display, pata hard drive (polled I/O), serial, and parallel port drivers 15:20:07 could be installed to and boot from a hard drive using GRUB for multiboot compliance and sharing the drive with normal OSes 15:20:43 It sounds great! This isn't ForthOS is it? Where can I get it :-) 15:21:05 How long did it take to boot? Does it compile itself at boot time? 15:21:32 it has a small assembly core, with a lot of the source being compiled during boot. boot took a second or two IIRC 15:21:55 http://s3.retroforth.org/download/index.html 15:22:13 Look for 9.1.1, which was the last stable, native capable version 15:22:19 HA! Two seconds! Compare that to two or three minutes for a win system! 15:22:19 I think there's sources and an ISO there 15:22:32 windows does a *lot* more though 15:23:07 Excellent! I'm typing this on Netbook (Acer Aspire one running Linpus Linux) - I wonder if it will dual boot ;-) 15:23:21 CRC: Yes, to be fair, that is true. 15:23:47 I have no idea how it'll fair on modern systems. I haven't run it outside of an emulator in about two years now 15:24:57 * crc thinks that 9.1.1 had interrupt support, where interrupt handlers could be written in Forth 15:25:27 I had considered adding system calls, allowing it to be used to boot a more traditional unix-style userland (single tasking though) on top of the forth kernel 15:25:34 but I never went through with that 15:28:43 do you think you will ever do any more work on it? 15:28:55 maybe 15:29:19 I'd like to, but haven't had the time. Debugging native code is hard and time consuming 15:29:25 just downloaded it - will burn a cd image tomorrow ;-) 15:29:51 It it blocks or files? 15:30:49 blocks 15:31:53 I like blocks - it has that retro feel! 15:32:38 I'm developing a Forth in TMS9900 assembly for an old Texas Instruments computer as a hobby. Haven't worked on it for a few weeks though. 15:32:55 It's close to finished actually, and still under 4K ;-) 15:33:42 INTERPRET is giving me real trouble though, or one of the routines that are called by INTERPRET (EXPECT, WORD, FIND, NUMBER) 15:33:57 Debugging it is difficult. It's nearly there... 15:34:37 Yeah. I remember porting IsForth to PPC -- the debugging was a total pain and took forever. 15:34:54 I can type on the keyboard and it will obey me ( e.g: 1 2 + DUP + 1+ etc) 15:36:15 Yeah, it's horrible - the initial bootstrapping - once I have the interpreter running properly it will have enough 'brains' and will become much easier. I haven't done compile mode yet, but I think it's fairly simple. 15:36:17 "obey me" nice turn of phrase. :) 15:37:48 It's very annoying though - it works sometimes, then it goes bananas, then hit enter a few times and it sorts itself out :-/ 15:38:38 :-( 15:38:44 Yeah, obey me! I mean I can watch the stack grow/shrink, and see the simple words (DUP, ROT etc) working on the stack, and they work (it felt great to get that working!) 15:38:53 yeah 15:40:32 Oh well, bed time for me! Work tomorrow! Good to chat with you guys, will check in tomorrow see if anyone is around. Take care! 15:40:57 : goodnight ; 15:41:00 ;-) 15:41:47 goodnight Wills. Let me know if retro works for you. 15:42:03 Yeah, will do! Bye for now! 15:42:37 --- quit: Wills ("Leaving") 15:44:00 --- quit: H4ns ("Leaving.") 16:06:55 --- join: ASau (n=user@193.138.70.52) joined #forth 16:07:55 --- part: ASau left #forth 16:50:50 --- join: Deformati (n=joe@71.238.45.45) joined #forth 17:09:12 --- quit: Deformative (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) 17:38:50 --- quit: JasonWoof (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) 18:16:38 --- join: sunwukong (n=salvi@ortros.den.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp) joined #forth 18:17:14 --- part: X-Scale left #forth 18:36:54 --- quit: qFox (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 18:38:54 --- nick: wanderer__ -> probonono 18:50:14 --- quit: tathi ("leaving") 19:22:19 --- join: skas (n=skas@ppp59-167-50-246.lns1.cbr1.internode.on.net) joined #forth 19:22:32 --- part: skas left #forth 21:04:55 --- join: snowrichard (n=snowrich@12.169.182.169) joined #forth 21:15:58 --- quit: snowrichard ("Leaving") 21:36:36 --- quit: iano () 22:57:04 --- quit: Quartus` (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) 23:07:27 --- join: nighty__ (n=nighty@210.188.173.245) joined #forth 23:53:13 --- join: cataska (n=cataska@210.64.6.233) joined #forth 23:59:59 --- log: ended forth/09.03.08