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FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems

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I run RSX-11M on a PiDP emulator and recently installed FIG-FORTH to 
experiment with programming Forth in a PDP-11 environment.  I found an 
issue that effects modern systems trying to interpret some of the text 
output from FIG-FORTH.

FIG-FORTH's dictionary intentionally sets the high bit on each word's 
last name-character as an "end of name" marker, assuming a 7-bit-only 
terminal simply won't display that bit.  The problem is modern terminal 
emulators will treat that last byte as an invalid character and render 
it as a "?".  You see this "?" only in odd-numbered words, not even. 
It's really annoying if you're trying to decipher a 1-word character.

For example, if you do a VLIST, you see something like this:
NF?   CF?   LF?   LATEST   TRAVERSE   -DUP   SPAC?   RO?   ?   ?
?   ?   ?   ALLO?   HERE   2+   1+   PREV   US?   HL?   R#   CS?

This issue looks to boil down to ID, so I made a three-line patch to 
FORTH.MAC which strips that high bit from it's own scratch copy of the 
name in PAD right before printing, so now you see this with a VLIST:

NFA   CFA   LFA   LATEST   TRAVERSE   -DUP   SPACE   ROT   >   <
=   -   ,   ALLOT   HERE   2+   1+   PREV   USE   HLD   R#   CSP

I didn't touch any of the real dictionary entries, and so far the patch 
does not appear to have broken anything.

Stackosaurus seems to be the current maintainer of FIG-FORTH, but their 
website http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth.html doesn't look to have 
any way to contact them, so I'm posting my fix here.

I hope this helps someone else and here is another before/after example

Before the Patch:

   run forth
FIG-FORTH  V 1.3
1 load

LOADING EDITOR... ? ISN'T UNIQUE ? ISN'T UNIQUE
LOADING ASSEMBLER... R0 ISN'T UNIQUE ? ISN'T UNIQUE
LOADING STRING PACKAGE...
LOADING STRING EXTENSIONS...
BY? ISN'T UNIQUE
  OK

After the Patch:
   run forth
FIG-FORTH  V 1.4
1 load

LOADING EDITOR... R ISN'T UNIQUE I ISN'T UNIQUE
LOADING ASSEMBLER... R0 ISN'T UNIQUE # ISN'T UNIQUE
LOADING STRING PACKAGE...
LOADING STRING EXTENSIONS...
BYE ISN'T UNIQUE
  OK

Eternal September won't let me post attachments (even text attachments), 
so here is the patch diff for FORTH.MAC which you can download directly 
from here: http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth.html

--- FORTH.MAC (v1.3, original)
+++ FORTH.MAC (v1.4, patched)
@@ -1406,7 +1406,14 @@
       HEAD    203,ID.,256,IDDOT,DOCOL                 ; ***** ID.
       .WORD   PAD,LIT,40,LIT,137,FILL,DUP
       .WORD   PFA,LFA,OVER,SUB,PAD,SWAP,CMOVE
-     .WORD   PAD,COUNT,LIT,37,AND,TYPE,SPACE,SEMIS
+     .WORD   PAD,COUNT,LIT,37,AND
+;  MASK OFF THE HIGH BIT (END-OF-NAME MARKER) ON THE LAST CHARACTER OF
+;  THE LOCAL PAD COPY ONLY, SO IT DISPLAYS CORRECTLY ON A 7-BIT TERMINAL.
+;  THE REAL DICTIONARY ENTRY IS NEVER TOUCHED (FIND STILL NEEDS ITS
+;  MARKER BIT INTACT), ONLY THIS SCRATCH COPY IN PAD.
+     .WORD   DUP,TOR,OVER,PLUS,LIT,1,SUB
+     .WORD   DUP,CAT,LIT,177,AND,SWAP,CSTOR
+     .WORD   FROMR,TYPE,SPACE,SEMIS
  ;
       HEAD    206,CREATE,240,CREAT,DOCOL              ; ***** CREATE
       .WORD   DFIND,ZBRAN,XXD2-.,DROP,NFA,IDDOT
@@ -1482,7 +1489,7 @@
       .WORD   SPSTO,DEC,SPACE
       .WORD   CR,PDOTQ
       .BYTE   21
-     .ASCII  /FIG-FORTH  V 1.3 /
+     .ASCII  /FIG-FORTH  V 1.4 /
       .EVEN
       .WORD   FORTH,DEFIN,QUIT
  ;

Enjoy,
ECNeilson

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FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems ECNeilson <eric@neilsonhart.com> - 2026-09-03 16:22 -0500
  Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems David Meyer <papa@sdf.org> - 2026-09-05 13:08 +0900
    Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems ECNeilson <eric@neilsonhart.com> - 2026-09-05 21:16 -0500
  Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) - 2026-09-17 17:25 +0000
    Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-18 11:23 +0200
      Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard) - 2026-09-18 14:12 +0000
    Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems ECNeilson <eric@neilsonhart.com> - 2026-09-28 21:36 -0500
      Re: FigForth v1.4 for the PDP-11 with fix for modern systems ECNeilson <eric@neilsonhart.com> - 2026-10-03 23:26 -0500

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