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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth as an OS
Message-ID: <9101031536.AA12680@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 2 Jan 91 20:28:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

> I'd like to see a "written-in-FORTH" clone of the popular OS's
> ( UNIX/MS-DOG/MACH/etc ) where from the prompt you could use standard
> dir/ls/cat/etc commands but all of the flag optional command line
> arguments would be available as WORDS!

Who will buy it?

This isn't a theoretical question; I have such a thing.  One of my
clients uses my Forthmacs system as the basis for a commercial
medical imaging computer.  The DOS-compatible filing system is written
in Forth, and the usual set of file manipulation commands (DIR, ls,
DEL, rm, etc) are available as Forth words.  (I provide both DOS-style
and Unix-style command names so people don't have to remember which
system they are using at the particular time.)  The only command
interpreter is the Forth text interpreter.

I have full rights to sell this operating system to anybody I want,
but it would be folly to try to market it as a mass-market product.
The computer industry has matured to the point where it takes many
millions of dollars to promote a new operating system in the mass
market.

I am not alone in having such technology; people have been doing
Forth-based operating systems for years.

Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM