Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?

From	Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?
Date	2015-02-13 21:28 +0100
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<mblmod$nhh$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(1 earlier) <42879ccc-20c7-46ad-bebc-968a9ff83f01@googlegroups.com> <slrnmdq6v7.asl.empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@Ferrycy.localdomain> <mblehn$igq$1@dont-email.me> <mblgbb$qa7$1@dont-email.me> <mblidn$3lq$1@dont-email.me>

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rickman wrote:

> On 2/13/2015 1:39 PM, Bernd Paysan wrote:
>> rickman wrote:
>>> Bloatware is one of those strawmen that we create and attack to prove a
>>> point without actually showing any facts.  I seriously doubt that a
>>> browser with similar capabilities to other browsers would use any less
>>> memory if written in Forth.
>>
>> The accidential complexity of such programs is *far bigger* than the
>> inherent complexity. E.g. if you compare the typesetting capabilities of
>> a modern browser with LaTeX, you see that LaTeX can do a lot more in a
>> lot
>> less memory.  Why?  Because the core of TeX was written by one clever guy
>> who knows his O() in terms of speed and size - he knows how to chose
>> algorithms and datastructures wisely.  He even wrote some books about the
>> art of computer programming.
> 
> You don't make any sense.  Latex is not a browser.  It's not even
> remotely like a browser.  The only thing it has in common is that it can
> create an image on your screen of a given page design.  I think there is
> a lot more to browsers than what Latex does.  Otherwise why would they
> not just use the Latex language for browsers?

One part of what the browser does is typesetting a structured text document.  
Instead of using LaTeX, they use HTML+CSS, but it is typesetting a 
structured text document - into a window instead of on paper, but that 
difference is small (you just don't need the page breaking algorithm).  And 
to your question: They reinvented half of what LaTeX can in a painstakenly 
process which took 20 years.  There's now even MathML in the browser to 
typeset formulas.  What they yet didn't invent was a real typesetting 
language, which would allow to load extensions to the typesetting into the 
browser.  So while LaTeX can have tons of styles on your harddisk, which you 
never need, the browser needs to load all his capabilities at start.

You better ask Tim Berner-Lee why he invented HTML, and didn't just put 
LaTeX into his browser; the latter would have made a lot of sense, since all 
the people at CERN usually write their stuff in LaTeX anyways.  But it would 
have been more work upfront.

Probably Tim thought, using HTML would make his job easier, because he did 
just implement a tiny subset of LaTeX.  At that time, it was simpler, and he 
could even integrate an interactive web page editor, because it was so 
simple.  And then, they had to expand this tiny thing to a full-blown 
typsetting engine with styles, with math, and a lot of other stuff.  And by 
doing that as an organic growth rather than with a structured approach, they 
created a lot of bloat.

IMHO that's because they did the browser upside down.  They started with the 
highest level, the structured hypertext.  And then, they slowly integrated 
the lower levels, which makes the whole thing flexible enough for all the 
diverse tasks a browser has to accomplish.  They added a style language - 
CSS.  They added a programming language, JavaScript.  They now even added a 
subset of OpenGL 1.0 in the form of WebGL, a rendering infrastructure.  Not 
the good one, which starts at OpenGL 2, and comes with a shader language, 
just the very basic thing.

And of course, by doing it the wrong way round, it all gets extremely 
complex.

I'm going to implement a browser for my net2o protocol.  I won't start on 
the top, the starting point, the "primitives" to build a browser are things 
like OpenGL, FreeType, and image decoder (SOIL), video decoding, and of 
course, a low-level, 100% general purpose programming language (Forth in a 
Sandbox).  Sooner or later, you'll get that anyways, there's asm.js, a 
portable assembler in JavaScript.  And the rest towards higher levels of 
abstraction are just programs you can load and execute in that sandbox.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/
net2o ID: kQusJzA;7*?t=uy@X}1GWr!+0qqp_Cn176t4(dQ*

Thread

Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 12:13 -0800
  Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-12 12:56 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-12 21:32 +0000
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 13:08 -0500
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 19:39 +0100
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-13 14:14 -0500
            Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-13 21:28 +0100
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:22 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 01:34 +0100
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:42 -0800
              HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-14 10:21 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 19:37 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-14 11:13 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 21:07 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 12:50 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-14 22:32 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-14 15:10 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-15 10:34 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-15 22:15 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 12:45 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-15 13:55 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-16 13:52 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX (was: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ?) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-16 15:47 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-16 09:05 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-17 12:21 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-20 13:23 -0800
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-20 22:33 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-02-21 15:14 +0000
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-21 20:23 +0100
                Re: HTML vs. LaTeX Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-02-21 11:33 -0800
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-14 10:14 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-22 01:57 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-22 18:35 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 01:58 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 04:59 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-02-23 19:18 -0500
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 18:09 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:04 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:51 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-24 10:23 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2015-02-23 21:19 +0100
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-23 17:58 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-24 01:07 -0800
                Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org - 2015-02-24 02:19 -0800
              Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2015-02-15 12:18 +0000
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-13 18:55 +0000
          Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Melzzzzz <mel@zzzzz.com> - 2015-02-13 20:27 +0100
        Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-13 09:53 -1000
  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "WJ" <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-13 14:18 +0000
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-13 11:03 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-13 22:46 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-14 02:35 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2015-02-14 18:47 +0100
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-02-14 18:56 -0800
  Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-15 17:10 -0800
    Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 01:20 -0800
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2015-02-16 12:35 +0100
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-02-16 08:12 -1000
      Re: Is 2015 the year of FORTH ? Ilya Tarasov <ilya74.tarasov@gmail.com> - 2015-02-16 15:17 -0800

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