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native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE

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  native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-08 11:46 +0100
    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Andreas Wagner <andreas.wagner@lowfatcomputing.org> - 2016-09-08 07:29 -0700
    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE lawrencedo99@gmail.com - 2016-09-09 23:48 -0700
      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-10 11:40 +0100
        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE foxaudioresearch@gmail.com - 2016-09-10 07:48 -0700
          Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE mhx@iae.nl - 2016-09-10 09:59 -0700
            Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE foxaudioresearch@gmail.com - 2016-09-10 12:27 -0700
              Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-11 15:01 +0100
                Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2016-09-11 08:02 -0700
                Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE lawrencedo99@gmail.com - 2016-09-11 19:07 -0700
            Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2016-09-10 22:13 +0200
            Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-11 14:52 +0100
            Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2016-09-12 09:10 +0000
              Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2016-09-12 13:49 +0200
          Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE stephen@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2016-09-12 13:55 +0000
            Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-13 11:18 +0100
              Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Ron Aaron <rambamist@gmail.com> - 2016-09-13 13:26 +0300
              Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Coos Haak <htrofhc@gmail.com> - 2016-09-13 13:13 +0200
                Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Chris Curl <ccurl609@gmail.com> - 2016-09-13 05:46 -0700
                  Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-14 14:03 +0100
                Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-13 10:30 -0700
              Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2016-09-13 16:45 +0000
                Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-14 14:03 +0100
                  Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2016-09-14 15:16 +0000
                    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-15 13:38 +0100
                      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2016-09-15 21:39 +0200
                        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-16 11:54 +0100
                          Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2016-09-16 09:49 -0500
                          Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE lawrencedo99@gmail.com - 2016-09-16 15:34 -0700
                      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-15 12:43 -0700
                        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-16 12:18 +0100
                      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2016-09-16 02:37 -0700
                        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-16 14:45 +0100
                  Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-14 10:30 -0700
                    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE lawrencedo99@gmail.com - 2016-09-14 15:42 -0700
        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE lawrencedo99@gmail.com - 2016-09-10 19:22 -0700
    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE missycurl@gmail.com - 2016-09-11 06:02 -0700
      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE missycurl@gmail.com - 2016-09-11 06:08 -0700
        Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-11 14:56 +0100
          Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE missycurl@gmail.com - 2016-09-11 12:59 -0700
    Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-09-13 23:10 +0100
      Re: native compiling embedable Forth with decent IDE jim <anon@example.com> - 2016-09-14 14:03 +0100

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#50944

Coos Haak <htrofhc@gmail.com> writes:
>> And yet I can use TCP/IP with FPC ... What went wrong with forth?
> What is this FPC, you mean Tom Zimmer's F-PC that came on 4 floppies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Pascal

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#50942

jim <anon@example.com> writes:
>What seems to have gone wrong with Forth is a failure to crystalize
>a standard and then build on top of it. There seem to be no builders.
>A total absence of tool builders.

It seems to me that some people on the standard committee consider
tool builders unnecessary, or at least support from the standard for
tool builders; the idea seems to be that the system implementors serve
as tool builders, making third-party tool builders unnecessary.

OTOH, even if you cannot do it in a standard way, you can do it in a
system-specific way.  We, the Gforth developers, have no reason to
fear tool developers as competition and would welcome tool developers
that build on Gforth.

>There is currently someone in this group arguing about upper case 
>or lower case for goodness sakes. Seriosuly?

Both Forth-94 and Forth-2012 have failed to standardize the issue; as
a result, that issue crops up now and then.

>I've said it before in the pascal camp - without
>what happens when you hit F1 in Delphi I doubt
>even Borland would have made it a success.
>Lazarus is losing that and losing users as a consequence.

I don't know what F1 does in Delphi, and what Lazarus is.  As for FPC,
do you mean the old DOS Forth by Tom Zimmer?

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2016: http://www.euroforth.org/ef16/

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#50972

In article <2016Sep13.184543@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, 
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at says...

> 
> I don't know what F1 does in Delphi, and what Lazarus is.  As for FPC,
> do you mean the old DOS Forth by Tom Zimmer?
> 
> - anton


Unfortunately the lazarus doumentation is falling apart these days
You can spend a week recreating the wheel only to find there are already
3 implementations and the documentation for one is missing the next
is impossible to find and the third just plain wrong.
If you keep that in mind it's a very useful toolchain.


You will however find a very lively and helpful forum 
(a real forum not some mindless mailing list or "blog"
or google spyware which makes up for most failings.)

The intro page and links is here:

http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Pretty much everything I'd have expected forth to be doing by now.


jim

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#50974

jim <anon@example.com> writes:
>In article <2016Sep13.184543@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, 
>anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at says...
>http://www.lazarus-ide.org/
>
>Pretty much everything I'd have expected forth to be doing by now.

Theseus <http://bigforth.sourceforge.net/> has been around for a long
time (at least since 1997), but has not been very popular.  Apparently
such things are not much in demand by Forth programmers.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2016: http://www.euroforth.org/ef16/

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#51003

In article <2016Sep14.171624@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, 
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at says...

> Theseus <http://bigforth.sourceforge.net/> has been around for a long
> time (at least since 1997), but has not been very popular.  Apparently
> such things are not much in demand by Forth programmers.
> 
> - anton

Ok anton  I did miss that one - 

It runs on win7 here long enough to see what it's trying to do (pretty much
what I' talking about as a start)  but tends
to crash or max out a single core and freeze.

Ok a laudable start but no community input is more likely the cause
of death here than lack of interest. Not to mention a number of
other factors. 

If it had been supported and developed it might have become a useful
part of a toolchain.

The sense I am getting is the only thing people here are interested in
is tiny little programs they can play with in emacs. 
That's fine if thats all you're interested in.

But I'd need the top of range VFX in order to achieve
my proof of concept ideas and I can't justify that level of spend
until after that point. Even then I have issues. No offence to
MPE it's just they work in a different market to what I need.

What Im looking  for is a serious toolchain to do some serious 
large scale speculative work with -I can't even use what I've 
discovered in the forth world for the proof of concept work I need to do.

It's looking like I'm going to have to use plain C which is a pain
because I'm going to have to invent a load of stuff I dont want
to waste my time with. Stuff I suspect I could have done easily 
in forth. On the other hand the environment I can work in makes
things so much easier overall.

I've looked around but my conclusion is:
Forth is stuck in 1980 and far too small and introverted
to deal with. Nobody is using it because nobody has made
it usable. Chicken and egg.









 

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#51010

In article <MPG.3244a692dc7ba36f98968c@news.virginmedia.com>,
jim  <anon@example.com> wrote:
>In article <2016Sep14.171624@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,
<SNIP>
>The sense I am getting is the only thing people here are interested in
>is tiny little programs they can play with in emacs.
>That's fine if thats all you're interested in.

That's kind of insulting. I've a high regard for people who have
mastered emacs. On average they probably write even larger programs
than I do.

The truth of the matter is, the denizens of c.l.f are highly
skilled programmers that would be held back rather than helped
by a GUI user interface. Neither are they interested in developing
such a tool for a very small audience while there are so many
other exiting projects waiting to be done.
You do very little to inspire me to even think about such a tool.

<SNIP>
>
>I've looked around but my conclusion is:
>Forth is stuck in 1980 and far too small and introverted
>to deal with. Nobody is using it because nobody has made
>it usable. Chicken and egg.

You can't use it, without the help of very skilled programmers
who write a GUI for you. Poor you.

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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#51032

In article <nretdr$lvj$1@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl>, 
albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl says...
> 
> In article <MPG.3244a692dc7ba36f98968c@news.virginmedia.com>,
> jim  <anon@example.com> wrote:
> >In article <2016Sep14.171624@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>,
> <SNIP>
> >The sense I am getting is the only thing people here are interested in
> >is tiny little programs they can play with in emacs.
> >That's fine if thats all you're interested in.
> 
> That's kind of insulting. I've a high regard for people who have
> mastered emacs. On average they probably write even larger programs
> than I do.
> 
> The truth of the matter is, the denizens of c.l.f are highly
> skilled programmers that would be held back rather than helped
> by a GUI user interface. Neither are they interested in developing
> such a tool for a very small audience while there are so many
> other exiting projects waiting to be done.
> You do very little to inspire me to even think about such a tool.
> 
> <SNIP>
> >
> >I've looked around but my conclusion is:
> >Forth is stuck in 1980 and far too small and introverted
> >to deal with. Nobody is using it because nobody has made
> >it usable. Chicken and egg.
> 
> You can't use it, without the help of very skilled programmers
> who write a GUI for you. Poor you.
> 
> Groetjes Albert

An ide is only one of the tools I require for project development.
The fact that that's confusing to people merely tells me who
I'm talking to..
I raised it as the most most shocking of absences not the only one.
For the record I can and have used forth professionally.

And I decline to respond to ignorant  childish stupidity.

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#51039

jim <anon@example.com> wrote:
> 
> And I decline to respond to ignorant  childish stupidity.

But you're pefectly happy to generate it.  It's interesting how often
those two go together.

Andrew.

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#51047

On Friday, September 16, 2016 at 10:55:03 PM UTC+12, jim wrote:
> The fact that that's confusing to people merely tells me who
> I'm talking to..

Yet you never responded to the the issues I raised that IDE-based builds cannot handle. Maybe those are confusing to you?

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#51011

jim <anon@example.com> writes:
> The sense I am getting is the only thing people here are interested in
> is tiny little programs they can play with in emacs.  That's fine if
> thats all you're interested in.

Forth was developed for measurement and control applications on machines
with few resources, and while it can do other things, imho that's what
it's best at.


>What Im looking for is a serious toolchain to do some serious large
>scale speculative work with -I can't even use what I've discovered in
>the forth world for the proof of concept work I need to do.
> It's looking like I'm going to have to use plain C

What kinds of programs are you thinking about?  For speculative and
exploratory programming I usually find it better to use higher level or
scripting languages (Python is nice for that).  C and Forth are for when
you need higher efficiency and resource control.

> I've looked around but my conclusion is: Forth is stuck in 1980 and
> far too small and introverted to deal with. Nobody is using it because
> nobody has made it usable. Chicken and egg.

I personally don't find the toolchain to be an issue.  Forth with a much
fancier toolchain would still be Forth, requiring its usual careful and
painstaking approach to programming.  By comparison, with Python, I can
throw code at the screen intuitively, and get something that runs slowly
but works.  That's usually enough to test the idea, and often enough to
be usable directly if the problem requirements are not too large.  If I
need it to run fast, this may indicate poor taste on my part, but these
days I generally prefer C++ to C.

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#51034

In article <87d1k5c5jb.fsf@jester.gateway.pace.com>, no.email@nospam.invalid 
says...
> 

> Forth was developed for measurement and control applications on machines
> with few resources, and while it can do other things, imho that's what
> it's best at.
> 
Not in its current state I agree.  It is exceptional at what you can do with
it (I was able to program an industrial robot to perform a task in one
hour flat that was projected to take 2 weeks by another organisation)

My belief is that it can and should do a good deal more.

> What kinds of programs are you thinking about?  For speculative and
> exploratory programming I usually find it better to use higher level or
> scripting languages (Python is nice for that).  C and Forth are for when
> you need higher efficiency and resource control.
> 
I can give a taste - 
I need low level control from the outset working with a kernel on bare metal
with large scale concurrency using proofs and failsafe technologies.

I can do this with C as the range of tools needed to perform specification
and project management/documentation  and control are obviously available
the reason I even looked at forth is because it would give me the flexibility
to cut short the work at a later stage. (I really could use all those
benefits forth advocates are so fond of shouting about)
 
> 
> I personally don't find the toolchain to be an issue.  Forth with a much
> fancier toolchain would still be Forth,

Not in my world - it would be developed and thats what I was hoping I'd
find - but obviously not. I can see exacttly where you are coming from
but  that's not necessarily the case. Forth may be a set
tools but that doesn't mean you can't change them - that's the whole point.
What does the book say - "Forth is a philosophy" ? People seem to have
missed the point wholesale.

> painstaking approach to programming.  By comparison, with Python, I can
> throw code at the screen intuitively, and get something that runs slowly
> but works.  That's usually enough to test the idea, and often enough to
> be usable directly if the problem requirements are not too large.  If I
> need it to run fast, this may indicate poor taste on my part, but these
> days I generally prefer C++ to C.

I will bite my tongue at this point.
My "discovery time" is about done anyway.

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#51030

On Thursday, 15 September 2016 13:39:24 UTC+1, jim  wrote:
> It's looking like I'm going to have to use plain C which is a pain
> because I'm going to have to invent a load of stuff I dont want
> to waste my time with. Stuff I suspect I could have done easily 
> in forth. On the other hand the environment I can work in makes
> things so much easier overall.
> 
> I've looked around but my conclusion is:
> Forth is stuck in 1980 and far too small and introverted
> to deal with. Nobody is using it because nobody has made
> it usable. Chicken and egg.

If it's true that functionality/code that you will require does not
exist in C, requiring you to invent it, then why on earth did you
ever think that Forth would be a viable alternative?

Doesn't make sense.

I do know what you mean, however, about a good IDE. When I program
in .Net or Java I'm very thankful for the .Net IDE and NetBeans, both
of which are world-class IMO.

However, I must admit, when it comes to Forth programming, I find that
I've got on very well with just a good text editor and the command line.

The only time a Forth IDE would make sense would be if the Forth VM and
the IDE were integrated, so that you could (for example) single-step
your code, add watches to variables/values, inspect areas of memory
or structures, view the stack etc. That would be nice, but not essential.

Forth is so malleable, that you could actually write a simple IDE custom
made for your own application, that understands your memory structures
etc. It could be built INTO the application, rather than separated. A
completely different concept.

It's worth noting that MPE has a client that has a Forth program that is
in excess of 1 million lines of code. I presume they have built their own
(forth-based) tools to help with the administration of such a large 
program.

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#51036

In article <36a5fc4e-062c-4454-be14-9d9164fd587e@googlegroups.com>, 
markwills1970@gmail.com says...
> 

> If it's true that functionality/code that you will require does not
> exist in C, requiring you to invent it, then why on earth did you
> ever think that Forth would be a viable alternative?
> 
> Doesn't make sense.
> 
It doesn't make sense because you don't know what I'm doing.
And I'm only able to provide the hints already provided.

> I do know what you mean, however, about a good IDE. When I program
> in .Net or Java I'm very thankful for the .Net IDE and NetBeans, both
> of which are world-class IMO.
> 

I tend to use a number of IDE's but for general C work I 
favour crystal revs pro.  Well worth a look if you havn't seen it.

> However, I must admit, when it comes to Forth programming, I find that
> I've got on very well with just a good text editor and the command line.
>

Of course when the task isn't too complex you can. The point I keep
trying to make here is that is not possible for my project and I've had
to rule out an entire environment I'd have prefered to use because
it has no support tools. 
 
> The only time a Forth IDE would make sense would be if the Forth VM and
> the IDE were integrated,  ...

Now you're getting the idea.

> ...so that you could (for example) single-step
> your code, add watches to variables/values, inspect areas of memory
> or structures, view the stack etc. That would be nice, but not essential.
> 
> Forth is so malleable, that you could actually write a simple IDE custom
> made for your own application, that understands your memory structures
> etc. It could be built INTO the application, rather than separated. A
> completely different concept.
> 
I don't doubt it but I need a good deal more and I want to work on
my own project not re-invent the wheel.

> It's worth noting that MPE has a client that has a Forth program that is
> in excess of 1 million lines of code. I presume they have built their own
> (forth-based) tools to help with the administration of such a large 
> program.

Yes I've been familiar with MPE for a couple of decades - by far
they're the best but targeted and priced in ways I cant use them
for this particular project. Amongst other reasons.
It is noteworthy that that their VFX compilers come with a good 
deal more support than a simple command line interface and "screens"

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#50977

jim <anon@example.com> writes:
> http://www.lazarus-ide.org/
> Pretty much everything I'd have expected forth to be doing by now.

I use Emacs Forth mode all the time, but have never felt any desire for
a fancy graphical IDE.

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#50980

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 5:30:49 AM UTC+12, Paul Rubin wrote:
> I use Emacs Forth mode all the time, but have never felt any desire for
> a fancy graphical IDE.

IDEs are too limiting. Because Emacs is just* a text editor, it is much more flexible.

*what do you mean, “just”?

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#50829

On Saturday, September 10, 2016 at 10:41:02 PM UTC+12, jim wrote:
> In article <e1766ec9-6238-46e2-ad03-c7e9510ccd19@googlegroups.com>, 
> Lawrence D’Oliveiro says...
>> IDEs are never very flexible. For one thing, they force you to do your
>> builds in a certain way.
> > 
> Is that meant to be serious?

Experienced programmers would know.

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#50847

It may be true that development environments and libraries for Forth have 
not kept up with the latest fashions, but that doesn't invalidate the strengths
of a programming paradigm of Forth as a language or way to approach a problem.

I have a small runtime kernel that implements a simple Forth VM, and a simple
compiler/assembler that generates images for that VM. 

The VM has been written in C and x86 assembler, and the compiler is written in C.

I don't feel a need for a slick IDE, because developing in Forth is interactive.

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#50848

To clarify, the VM is a bare metal VM. The compiler/assembler builds the 
boot image with the base words for the system. That brings up the system, 
and then I am able to build on that interactively.

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#50851

In article <34d82f1d-6b75-4f4f-9343-f5abd4fce74a@googlegroups.com>, 
missycurl@gmail.com says...
> 
> To clarify, the VM is a bare metal VM. The compiler/assembler builds the 
> boot image with the base words for the system. That brings up the system, 
> and then I am able to build on that interactively.


Bare metal is where I need to start from - sadly thats as far as most go.
Out of interest  - what processor is yours?

jom

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#50862

On Sunday, September 11, 2016 at 9:57:49 AM UTC-4, jim wrote:
> In article <34d82f1d-6b75-4f4f-9343-f5abd4fce74a@googlegroups.com>, 
> ccurl@....com says...
> > 
> > To clarify, the VM is a bare metal VM. The compiler/assembler builds the 
> > boot image with the base words for the system. That brings up the system, 
> > and then I am able to build on that interactively.
> 
> 
> Bare metal is where I need to start from - sadly thats as far as most go.
> Out of interest  - what processor is yours?
> 
> jom

It is an abstraction of a Forth virtual machine, with a data stack and a 
return stack, and the instructions work with values on the stack.

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