Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!ucbvax!SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV!ZMLEB From: ZMLEB@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Lee Brotzman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Files VS Blocks, a compromise Message-ID: <9010161602.AA01290@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 16 Oct 90 13:43:17 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 45 Mark Carroll writes: >In article <3540@mindlink.UUCP> a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow) writes: >> >>Click on a word, and a window with that word's words pops up, Click again, and >>the stack effect pops up. Another window shows a graph of resources used by >>the word. >> >>C'mon FORTHers, this is the 90's: the Information Age. Let's take the leading >>edge of programming! >> >>Now all we need is for someone to write a smart editor to do this, with little >>effort required from the user. Shareware or Freeware please. :-) > >Don't laugh - I'm actually thinking about doing something like this. > It's already been done, at least I think it has. A couple of years ago George Hawkins on the East Coast Forth Board was working on a project almost exactly like this using FPC as his base system. I remember that he was uploading versions of the code to ECFB so it may have filtered out into the other bulletin boards on ForthNet. Sorry but I don't remember the name of George's program. George is a really bright guy and a hell of a Forth programmer. He and I used to have a lot of fun shooting messages back and Forth. He implemented the single finest string package I ever saw in Forth, it was very complete and generalized. The package did not rely on the underlying structure of the string, although all strings it operated on had to be of the same type. Basically there was a set of two or three primitives that knew what the strings looked like, and the rest was built from there. Also the package was written to comply with Forth-83 completely -- a task which convinced George that Forth-83 alone is not sufficient to write code that does anything. Anyway, George's Forth system was supposed to work as a graphical tree display and had control-key commands for creating new words by filling in the trees. The system had the documentation built in to the graphical display. I never actually used it myself (for one thing all the source together wouldn't fit on a single *1 Megabyte* floppy, and I didn't want to download it). Like I said, it should be around somewhere, probably in with other files for the FPC Forth system. I wonder what ever happened to old George. He dropped out of the ECFB scene even before I did a year or so back. George? George Hawkins? Are you out there, buddy? -- Lee Brotzman (FIGI-L Moderator) -- BITNET: ZMLEB@SCFVM Internet: zmleb@scfvm.gsfc.nasa.gov -- "Prayer: the last refuge of a scoundrel." -- Lisa Simpson