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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: HS/Forth
Message-ID: <2716.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 6 May 91 00:39:03 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 48

Category 1,  Topic 31
Message 31        Sat May 04, 1991
D.POPE7 [Dan Pope]           at 12:50 EDT
 
I'd like to elaborate on a comment I made at the May 2 FIGGY BAR regarding
HS/Forth.  I'm a Forth novice, intrigued by the language, interested in
learning it for my own edification if nothing else.  I have downloaded several
PD/Shareware version and have used MasterForth on the Apple IIe.  With each of
these I ran into annoying little gotchas that interfered with my enjoyment of
learning Forth.  I finally purchased a student version of HS/Forth from
Harvard Softworks; so far I'm very pleased with what I've received.  It came
with the book FORTH: A TEXT AND REFERENCE by Kelly & Spies (which I like
better than STARTING FORTH).  There is also a well organized 450+ page
tutorial and reference manual written by Kelly & Callahan.  The
tutorial/reference is keyed to the text and came in a solid loose-leaf binder
and slip cover.

This version of Forth is designed specifically for PC/MS-DOS systems which
suites me fine.  Apparently HS/Forth does not completely comply with either
FORTH-79 or FORTH-83 but you can make it compatible by loading extensions. 
There are also extensions for strings, dynamic strings, quadruple-length
numbers, floating point arithmetic, trig functions, arrays, extra stacks,
vectors, graphics, sound effects and DOS calls; also, compilers, metacompilers
and debugging tools that I don't understand yet.  I eventually want to play
around with graphics and it looks like this system will let me to do that.

HS/Forth can store text on disks in three ways; as regular continuous MS-DOS
text files (which I prefer), as text files broken up into Forth blocks, or as
blocks placed directly on the disk in traditional Forth manner.  There are
editors for handling each of these options.  There is an easy to learn "Tiny-
File Editor" that's great for experimenting or you can shell out to any other
MS-DOS compatible editor.

I can't comment on the suitability of HS/Forth as a development environment
but as a Forth learning tool so far I'd say it's the greatest thing since
colored margarine (gave away my age there).

I noticed that in the last issue of FD, Harvard Softworks was not advertising
a student version.  Maybe someone else knows if it is still available, or
their phone number is (513)748-0390.

Dan Pope
 Flint Michigan
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