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Old Forth implementations

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  Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-09 05:16 -0700
    Re: Old Forth implementations Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2014-09-09 17:01 +0100
      Re: Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-09 12:28 -0700
        Re: Old Forth implementations Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2014-09-09 20:51 +0100
    Re: Old Forth implementations "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2014-09-09 07:50 -1000
      Re: Old Forth implementations albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-09-10 09:01 +0000
      Re: Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-10 02:29 -0700
        Re: Old Forth implementations hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-09-10 18:46 -0700
          Re: Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-11 05:45 -0700
          Re: Old Forth implementations Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2014-09-11 12:41 -0400
            Re: Old Forth implementations hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-09-11 20:41 -0700
              Re: Old Forth implementations albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-09-12 10:46 +0000
            Re: Old Forth implementations rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2014-09-12 00:28 -0400
              Re: Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-12 02:36 -0700
                Re: Old Forth implementations rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2014-09-12 10:47 -0400
                  Re: Old Forth implementations "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2014-09-12 16:22 +0100
              Re: Old Forth implementations Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2014-09-12 13:54 -0400
    Re: Old Forth implementations francois.ganza@wanadoo.fr - 2014-09-12 00:15 -0700
      Re: Old Forth implementations hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-09-12 20:15 -0700
        Re: Old Forth implementations Steve Graham <jsgrahamus@yahoo.com> - 2014-09-13 11:06 -0700
          Re: Old Forth implementations hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-09-14 19:06 -0700
            Re: Old Forth implementations francois.ganza@wanadoo.fr - 2014-09-15 22:55 -0700
              Re: Old Forth implementations Pablo Hugo Reda <pabloreda@gmail.com> - 2014-09-16 03:26 -0700
            Re: Old Forth implementations "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2014-09-16 16:24 +0100
              Re: Old Forth implementations mhx@iae.nl - 2014-09-19 12:37 -0700
              Re: Old Forth implementations hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-09-19 17:18 -0700
                Re: Old Forth implementations Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-09-20 02:21 -0500
              Re: Old Forth implementations Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-09-23 11:05 -0700
                Re: Old Forth implementations "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2014-09-23 08:18 -1000
        Re: Old Forth implementations francois.ganza@wanadoo.fr - 2014-09-13 15:00 -0700
    Re: Old Forth implementations stephen@mpeforth.com - 2014-09-17 14:32 -0700

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#33326 — Old Forth implementations

Going through the old stuff has reminded me that MPE used to sell a CD with its old PowerForth, Modular Forth and - after I bought mine - one for Windows. It cost about £20 / $30 and you got zero support, just the files the original purchasers got plus the manuals as PDF files.

Sadly, it stopped doing this some years ago. Did people expect support, despite the clear statement that there isn't any, or did the stock of CDs run out?

I would love to see an old microFORTH and polyFORTH. I see GreenArrays have had the 1994 polyFORTH reference manual plus an implementation of polyFORTH freely available for its CPU for the past couple of years without the world falling over.

FORTH Inc no longer sells polyFORTH (or, if it does, it keeps it very quiet on the website) - is there any chance of making it available for old systems?

The agreement for the GreenArray's version says "You are authorized to use polyFORTH as a development tool for systems and applications that run on our chips. You are not authorized to use this software with other chips than ours, nor to port it to other computers than the F18A, without a polyFORTH license from FORTH, Inc."

What does a licence cost now?

I was also always curious about the Harvard Softworks Forth system...

  Ian

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#33328

Just Ian wrote:

> Going through the old stuff has reminded me that MPE used to sell a CD
> with its old PowerForth, Modular Forth and - after I bought mine - one for
> Windows. It cost about £20 / $30 and you got zero support, just the files
> the original purchasers got plus the manuals as PDF files.

I think I still have my "paid for" full PowerForth environment somewhere in 
the deep archive (where all my floppy disk images ended up). This also 
included the X-Shell tools. 

I think Steve gets a bit fed up with the expectation of "free" support from 
those who obtain or download the freely available versions. People should 
realise that support costs and will always cost. Either you pay for the 
product and get an element of support thrown in with it or you get the 
software free and then pay for the support. You have to pay for the hardware 
after all.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET.....<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy.............<http://www.hidecs.co.uk>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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#33330

Paul E Bennett said:

> I think Steve gets a bit fed up with the expectation of "free" support from 
> those who obtain or download the freely available versions. People should 
> realise that support costs and will always cost. Either you pay for the 
> product and get an element of support thrown in with it or you get the 
> software free and then pay for the support. 

I think that's entirely reasonable and I wouldn't dream of emailing or calling MPE saying 'You know that "no support" CD you sold me? Well, I'm having this problem with...' without waving some money at them too. 

Is either available actually to download anywhere? (Not that I need to, I'm just curious.)

> You have to pay for the hardware after all.

Sometimes! One reason for being interested in software this old is being given some free old hardware so I can see if I can read some old 5.25" floppies from a variety of OSes and in a variety of formats. After that, there are some old DC2120 tapes to look at.

  Ian

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#33331

Just Ian wrote:

> Paul E Bennett said:
> 
>> I think Steve gets a bit fed up with the expectation of "free" support
>> from those who obtain or download the freely available versions. People
>> should realise that support costs and will always cost. Either you pay
>> for the product and get an element of support thrown in with it or you
>> get the software free and then pay for the support.
> 
> I think that's entirely reasonable and I wouldn't dream of emailing or
> calling MPE saying 'You know that "no support" CD you sold me? Well, I'm
> having this problem with...' without waving some money at them too.
> 
> Is either available actually to download anywhere? (Not that I need to,
> I'm just curious.)
> 
>> You have to pay for the hardware after all.
> 
> Sometimes! One reason for being interested in software this old is being
> given some free old hardware so I can see if I can read some old 5.25"
> floppies from a variety of OSes and in a variety of formats. After that,
> there are some old DC2120 tapes to look at.
> 
>   Ian

MPE has a page on their site which lists the legacy families of cross 
compilers that they will sell with very limited support (depends on the 
status of some little grey cells for retrieving historical material).

<http://www.mpeforth.com/xclegacy.htm>

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET.....<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy.............<http://www.hidecs.co.uk>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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#33329

On 9/9/14 2:16 AM, Just Ian wrote:
> Going through the old stuff has reminded me that MPE used to sell a CD with its old PowerForth, Modular Forth and - after I bought mine - one for Windows. It cost about £20 / $30 and you got zero support, just the files the original purchasers got plus the manuals as PDF files.
>
> Sadly, it stopped doing this some years ago. Did people expect support, despite the clear statement that there isn't any, or did the stock of CDs run out?
>
> I would love to see an old microFORTH and polyFORTH. I see GreenArrays have had the 1994 polyFORTH reference manual plus an implementation of polyFORTH freely available for its CPU for the past couple of years without the world falling over.
>
> FORTH Inc no longer sells polyFORTH (or, if it does, it keeps it very quiet on the website) - is there any chance of making it available for old systems?
>
> The agreement for the GreenArray's version says "You are authorized to use polyFORTH as a development tool for systems and applications that run on our chips. You are not authorized to use this software with other chips than ours, nor to port it to other computers than the F18A, without a polyFORTH license from FORTH, Inc."
>
> What does a licence cost now?
>
> I was also always curious about the Harvard Softworks Forth system...

Few companies can afford to maintain software over time with the 
underlying hardware & firmware changing so dramatically. FORTH, Inc. 
and, I'm sure, MPE, are no exception.

There are many problems with old systems. In the case of microFORTH, the 
hardware it ran on is no longer around, except in warehouses or museums, 
and we have no way to even read the old media. Since FORTH, Inc. has 
always maintained self-replicating systems (as opposed to having source 
in assembler of C), we would need to have the source readable on an 
existing, compatible Forth to reproduce it.

polyFORTH originally ran on systems like 68000 development systems, then 
on DOS, and then on DOS emulators. As the underlying hardware and 
firmware on PCs evolved, it became increasingly difficult to keep up. We 
cannot sell a system that we can't realistically support.

I have discussed releasing the listings and manual for polyFORTH with 
Leon Wagner, the current President of FORTH, Inc., and he is potentially 
interested (though we have no time frame), but even that would take a 
fair amount of work at this point. Leon and our other staff depends on 
FORTH, Inc. for a living; we have to prioritize doing what keeps the 
company afloat, which means supporting our current customers and 
products the best we can.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

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#33339

In article <2IednaUdDZRooJLJnZ2dnUU7-b-dnZ2d@supernews.com>,
Elizabeth D. Rather <erather@forth.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
>I have discussed releasing the listings and manual for polyFORTH with
>Leon Wagner, the current President of FORTH, Inc., and he is potentially
>interested (though we have no time frame), but even that would take a
>fair amount of work at this point. Leon and our other staff depends on
>FORTH, Inc. for a living; we have to prioritize doing what keeps the
>company afloat, which means supporting our current customers and
>products the best we can.

As this is essentially a service to the community it is perfectly
reasonable to enlist volunteers, and keep the hassle for Forth Inc.
to a minimum.

>
>Cheers,
>Elizabeth


Groetjes Albert
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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#33340

Elizabeth D. Rather said:

> There are many problems with old systems. In the case of microFORTH, the 
> hardware it ran on is no longer around, except in warehouses or museums, 
> and we have no way to even read the old media. Since FORTH, Inc. has 
> always maintained self-replicating systems (as opposed to having source 
> in assembler of C), we would need to have the source readable on an 
> existing, compatible Forth to reproduce it.

I am more aware of the issues around reading old media than I would like :( even if it is surprising that somewhere that depended on and made money from what was on it doesn't have a copy of such a significant and historic product on something that is readable, even that's a paper listing or tape. 
 
> polyFORTH originally ran on systems like 68000 development systems, then 
> on DOS, and then on DOS emulators. As the underlying hardware and 
> firmware on PCs evolved, it became increasingly difficult to keep up. We 
> cannot sell a system that we can't realistically support.

Does this mean that licences are not for sale?

It would be interesting to know how much work was involved in getting it to run on, say DOSBox.
 
> I have discussed releasing the listings and manual for polyFORTH with 
> Leon Wagner, the current President of FORTH, Inc., and he is potentially 
> interested (though we have no time frame), but even that would take a 
> fair amount of work at this point. 

Well, the reference manual is out there and it is extremely good. (I suspect you know that already!)

> Leon and our other staff depends on FORTH, Inc. for a living; we have 
> to prioritize doing what keeps the company afloat, which means supporting
> our current customers and products the best we can.

Definitely.

  Ian

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#33348

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 2:29:55 AM UTC-7, Just Ian wrote:
> Elizabeth D. Rather said:
> > I have discussed releasing the listings and manual for polyFORTH with 
> > Leon Wagner, the current President of FORTH, Inc., and he is potentially 
> > interested (though we have no time frame), but even that would take a 
> > fair amount of work at this point. 
> 
> Well, the reference manual is out there and it is extremely good. (I suspect you know that already!)

Wow! That is some major brown-nosing! Maybe there is a reason why you don't give us your name --- you're an employee of Forth Inc., aren't you?

Realistically, Forth Inc. will never release source-code for PolyForth. Elizabeth Rather and her sycophants have repeatedly stated on comp.lang.forth that PolyForth was not limited to 64K on the 8086 (64K for application code, application data, compiler, dictionary, editor --- everything!). If they now released the source-code for PolyForth, it would be obvious to everybody that they have been lying, and that PolyForth really was limited in this way. Nobody at Forth Inc. was able to figure out how the segment registers worked on the 8086 --- now they just want to put PolyForth behind them --- they don't want to shine a spotlight on the failure of PolyForth, as it is not producing any money anymore, and they are selling SwiftForth now.

> > Leon and our other staff depends on FORTH, Inc. for a living; we have 
> > to prioritize doing what keeps the company afloat, which means supporting
> > our current customers and products the best we can.
> 
> Definitely.

I paid over $400 for SwiftForth-v2, and it had major bugs. For example, (LOCAL) would crash the system when used. Forth Inc. does not support its customers. Elizabeth Rather has tried mightily (on the Forth-200x mailing list) to sell me an upgrade to SwiftForth-v3 that supposedly has all of these bugs fixed. At Forth Inc. there is no distinction between "support" and "sales" --- if a customer calls Forth Inc. and points out that the product they paid for is full of bugs, the Forth Inc. staff sees this as a sales opportunity (so much better than cold-calling, as the potential customer has called them indicating an interest in their product) --- also, because the customer has already given them money, the customer must be of low intelligence, and can hopefully be talked into giving them more money.

At Forth Inc., it is all about scamming people out of money --- anybody who thinks that Elizabeth Rather cares about anything else, is deluded.

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#33355

hughag...@yahoo.com said:

> > Well, the [polyFORTH]reference manual is out there and it is extremely 
> > good. (I suspect you know that already!)
> 
> Wow! That is some major brown-nosing! Maybe there is a reason why you 
> don't give us your name --- you're an employee of Forth Inc., aren't you?

I don't know why I am disobeying the 'do not feed the troll' rule, but..

.. that manual is superb. Given who the authors are, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but I haven't seen such a good compiler manual since Borland's early days.

In the first hundred pages, I had only two issues: 

On p53, "The stack effect of all members of a set of words to be EXECUTEd in a particular context must be the same. That is, they must all require or leave the same number of items on the stack." 

I'd say 'should' rather than 'must' there. There are very few times when I can think of a good reason not to do it, but you could have a vectored word do ABORT in some cases and do something else in others, for example. Saying 'must' implies that's impossible or checked for.

On p76, there's a spurious linebreak between "[ and" and "; RECOVER".

So one example of me quibbling with insisting on best practice and one incredibly minor typo.

  Ian

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#33357

hughaguilar96@yahoo.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 2:29:55 AM UTC-7, Just Ian wrote:
> > Elizabeth D. Rather said:
> > > I have discussed releasing the listings and manual for polyFORTH with
> > > Leon Wagner, the current President of FORTH, Inc., and he is potentially
> > > interested (though we have no time frame), but even that would take a
> > > fair amount of work at this point.
> >
> > Well, the reference manual is out there and it is extremely good. (I suspect you know that already!)
>
> Wow! That is some major brown-nosing! Maybe there is a reason why you don't give us your name --- you're an employee of Forth Inc., aren't you?
>
> Realistically, Forth Inc. will never release source-code for PolyForth. Elizabeth Rather

> and her sycophants have repeatedly stated on comp.lang.forth that PolyForth was not

> limited to 64K on the 8086 (64K for application code, application data, compiler,

> dictionary, editor --- everything!). If they now released the source-code for PolyForth,

> it would be obvious to everybody that they have been lying, and that PolyForth really

> was limited in this way. Nobody at Forth Inc. was able to figure out how the segment

> registers worked on the 8086 --- now they just want to put PolyForth behind them ---

> they don't want to shine a spotlight on the failure of PolyForth, as it is not producing any

> money anymore, and they are selling SwiftForth now.
>
> > > Leon and our other staff depends on FORTH, Inc. for a living; we have
> > > to prioritize doing what keeps the company afloat, which means supporting
> > > our current customers and products the best we can.
> >
> > Definitely.
>
> I paid over $400 for SwiftForth-v2, and it had major bugs. For example, (LOCAL)

> would crash the system when used. Forth Inc. does not support its customers. Elizabeth Rather

> has tried mightily (on the Forth-200x mailing list) to sell me an upgrade to SwiftForth-v3

> that supposedly has all of these bugs fixed. At Forth Inc. there is no distinction between

> "support" and "sales" --- if a customer calls Forth Inc. and points out that the product they

> paid for is full of bugs, the Forth Inc. staff sees this as a sales opportunity (so much better

> than cold-calling, as the potential customer has called them indicating an interest in their

> product) --- also, because the customer has already given them money, the customer

> must be of low intelligence, and can hopefully be talked into giving them more money.

> At Forth Inc., it is all about scamming people out of money --- anybody who thinks

> that Elizabeth Rather cares about anything else, is deluded.

And the objective of this email is ?

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#33360

On Thursday, September 11, 2014 9:40:10 AM UTC-7, Walter Banks wrote:
> hughaguilar96@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > Well, the reference manual is out there and it is extremely good. (I suspect you know that already!)
> 
> > Wow! That is some major brown-nosing! Maybe there is a reason why you don't give us your name --- you're an employee of Forth Inc., aren't you?

> And the objective of this email is ?

And the objective of this brown-nosing is?

I can understand brown-nosing an employer, and I see that often. But why brown-nose a salesperson for a competing company? 

I think that a lot of people are just born followers --- wherever they go, they first find out who the big cheese is, and they commence to sucking up. Elizabeth Rather depends entirely upon this psychological quirk of the majority of people, to maintain her big-cheese status here on comp.lang.forth. And, when that doesn't work, she just uses shills or sock-puppets to brown-nose herself.

The Forth language is never going to be taken seriously in the real world until Forth Inc. is removed from the picture. Forth Inc. has produced a long litany of failures! I already mentioned how PolyForth on the 8086 was limited to 64K. This resulted in the Forth language becoming a laughing-stock among programmers who were using C that supported the six memory models (Small being the most commonly used). The PolyForth model was worse than Tiny, because it was not just the application code and application data that had to fit in 64K, but the compiler, dictionary, editor, etc.. By all accounts, PolyForth was worse than QBasic (the freebie with MS-DOS that replaced GW-BASIC). Forth Inc. is the boat anchor that keeps the Forth community from sailing into the future.

Forth Inc. and ANS-Forth have to be defeated! There is no way for the Forth language to ever be taken seriously until then. ANS-Forth too, because ANS-Forth is just SwiftForth with the pretension of being the standard for everybody --- including people such as myself who have written professional Forth programs without Forth Inc. or ANS-Forth.

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#33365

In article <f8223928-c2b9-4f58-a2c6-93f8da422388@googlegroups.com>,
 <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, September 11, 2014 9:40:10 AM UTC-7, Walter Banks wrote:
>> hughaguilar96@yahoo.com wrote:
>> > > Well, the reference manual is out there and it is extremely good.
>(I suspect you know that already!)
>>
>> > Wow! That is some major brown-nosing! Maybe there is a reason why
>you don't give us your name --- you're an employee of Forth Inc., aren't
>you?
>
>> And the objective of this email is ?
>
>And the objective of this brown-nosing is?
>
>I can understand brown-nosing an employer, and I see that often. But why
>brown-nose a salesperson for a competing company?

Yes! Right! This makes it very probably that his was an honest
opinion.

Groetjes Albert
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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#33361

On 9/11/2014 12:41 PM, Walter Banks wrote:
>
> And the objective of this email is ?

Are you happy with the response to your email?  I'm curious about what 
you expected him to write...

I used to treat Hugh like a rational person.  But eventually I realized 
that he was never going to respond to reason.  People develop neurosis 
and phobias, neither of which are rational and neither of which listen 
to reason.  Few if any of us are immune to having these, but often they 
aren't so debilitating.

In some areas Hugh is fairly rational.  Clearly he knows quite a bit 
about Forth and can think about it rationally... to a point.  But there 
is a certain level of paranoia or something that is triggered when he 
confronts an issue with the language he doesn't appreciate.  He then 
turns to conspiracy theories centered around Ms. Conklin (aka Ms. 
Rather) as the central villain.  You could say in Hugh's mind she is 
Moriarty and Hugh is Sherlock Holmes.

Yes, I expect Hugh's self image is very much like that, a Sherlock 
Holmes sleuthing his way through the mysteries of Forth seeking the 
villains who have tortured and perverted it into its present form.

-- 

Rick

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#33363

rickman said:

> Are you happy with the response to your email?  I'm curious about what 
> you expected him to write...

I'm curious as to why anyone would think that praising a manual that's over 25 years old for a product that's not for sale is shilling. 

If it is, can I have my 5p now, please?
 
  Ian

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#33367

On 9/12/2014 5:36 AM, Just Ian wrote:
> rickman said:
>
>> Are you happy with the response to your email?  I'm curious about what
>> you expected him to write...
>
> I'm curious as to why anyone would think that praising a manual that's over 25 years old for a product that's not for sale is shilling.
>
> If it is, can I have my 5p now, please?

You didn't answer the question, are you happy with the response you got? 
  Did you expect anything different?

-- 

Rick

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#33368

on 12/09/2014 15:47:13, rickman wrote:
> On 9/12/2014 5:36 AM, Just Ian wrote:
>> rickman said:
>>
>>> Are you happy with the response to your email?  I'm curious about what
>>> you expected him to write...
>>
>> I'm curious as to why anyone would think that praising a manual that's over 25 years old for a product that's not for 
sale is shilling.
>>
>> If it is, can I have my 5p now, please?
> 
> You didn't answer the question, are you happy with the response you
> got? Did you expect anything different?
> 

Hugh pounding on and on was expected. He doesn't know when to quid. No
doubt he'll bob up again and get on everyone's thrupenny bits. 

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#33369

rickman wrote:

> On 9/11/2014 12:41 PM, Walter Banks wrote:
> >
> > And the objective of this email is ?
>
> Are you happy with the response to your email?  I'm curious about what
> you expected him to write...
>
> I used to treat Hugh like a rational person.  But eventually I realized
> that he was never going to respond to reason.

My inhibitors failed before I hit return. I wanted to see if there was a
real
thought in a disjointed post. The response was less rational than the
original. If hugh wants to change the definition write a new standard
and argue for its acceptance.

Your point is well made. I need coffee.

w..

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#33362

But the problem with x86 and segmentation is that Forth code.... is data !

I use Forth on little automated machines.
I use FreeDos (FAT32) in Flat Real mode (<4Gb Ram)
I use SVGA card (in this moment, 1280x1024x8bits on a cutting table)

And my Forth code still work in a 64Kb segment ! :-p

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#33370

On Friday, September 12, 2014 12:15:30 AM UTC-7, francoi...@wanadoo.fr wrote:
> But the problem with x86 and segmentation is that Forth code.... is data !

I used UR/Forth. It had the machine-code for the primitives in one segment (CS), the Forth code and data in another segment (DS), and the dictionary in a third segment (accessed by ES, although ES could also be used by the programmer for other things). This was pretty comparable in memory usage to Turbo C's Small memory model. Also, according to my benchmarks, UR/Forth was equal to Turbo C's Small code in regard to speed.

PolyForth put everything (including the dictionary, which is quite bulky) into a single 64K segment. Most likely, they ported an old version of PolyForth over to the 8086 from a processor that was limited to 64K (likely the PDP-11), without ever learning how the segment registers on the 8086 worked. 

My impression of Elizabeth Rather is that she is basically a script kiddie. She just obtains software that other people have written, and uses it. In this case, Forth Inc. ported one of Charles Moore's old programs over to the 8086 without ever learning enough 8086 assembly-language to find out that segment registers allow more than 64K to be accessed by a program --- a purely simple-minded port, without understanding how the program worked, or how the processor worked, or anything else. In the 8086-era, most people assumed that Forth Inc. represented Forth (because of the name), and so when they saw how abysmal PolyForth was in regard to quality, they tended to dismiss the entire Forth community as incompetent without any further consideration.

Anybody who says that Elizabeth Rather is a programmer, is brown-nosing. She isn't a programmer. She has never written a program in her life. She is a phony --- and she is giving the entire Forth community a bad name. She was the chair of the ANS-Forth committee, and ANS-Forth is what killed the Forth language --- nobody in the real world has taken Forth seriously since ANS-Forth came out. She is also a chronic liar. In her effort to get me kicked off the Forth-200x mailing list, she said that I had been fired from Testra because MFX was no good. She is totally lying! I wasn't fired. Also, I visited Testra a couple of weeks ago, and they said they continue to use MFX today. Her lies are not even realistic --- how would she know anything about Testra? --- she just makes up all this stuff. Her and Leon's story about Forth Inc. working for NASA was a sales tactic --- they just made that stuff up because it sounded good and they hoped that it would induce people to buy SwiftForth --- they don't work for NASA. Now she brags about how Forth Inc. is suing Apple because Apple used the name "Swift" for their language (Swift is similar to Go, and is not similar to Forth in any way). She says Forth Inc. owns the word "swift," although it is a common word in the English language. This is not helping the Forth community, because people get the impression that Forth programmers make their money primarily through litigation --- it is just sleazy.

Forth Inc. is ruining the reputation of the entire Forth community --- the Forth language will never be taken seriously until Forth Inc. is gone.

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#33371

hughaguilar96@yahoo.com wrote:
> She has never written a program in her life.

What is your proof that Elizabeth has never written a program in her life?

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