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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: What's WRONG with Forth?
Message-ID: <2765.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 15 May 91 02:10:14 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 83

Category 2,  Topic 9
Message 99        Tue May 14, 1991
D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 00:31 EDT
 
Thanks for the thoughts Brad!  Please let me know if your article is ever run
in SIGForth.  I'd enjoy reading it.

 > I need to deliver clear, royalty-free title to any software that
 > I write, and I need to use the Forth compiler layer as part of my
 > application.

The compiler layer is where the line has been drawn, but from the sounds of
things, it sounds like more of a problem of semantics than a technical one. 
It doesn't sound as if you need colon (:), do you need CREATE or just which
part of the compiler are you using?

 > I need to deliver a maintainable package to a group of assembly-
 > language programmers.

Who does the maintenance, you or your clients?  The pF target compiler would
most certainly need a shell, and we have not written one yet, but otherwise I
could see how the the "tough" stuff could be buryed.  You're right though, our
documentation is written for experts and the user shell is pratically non-
existant.  We can work on that.

 > It also allows the use of text files; and I didn't at all relish
 > the thought of selling screens and a brand-new editor (and way of
 > thinking) to these guys.

Absolutely!  I recognize our deficency there.  It might not even be that hard
of a sell internally anymore.  I actually haven't even tried to _sell_ it yet.
We've already got it on our "wish" list, but it probably won't come until we
revamp the entire user interface (:Something we all know that _some_ Forth's
need:).

 > ... more "glitzy" -- or perhaps I should say "professional
 > looking."

Of course this makes a difference!  Bells and whistles are what sell a product
to the mass market.  We have not gone after that market yet.  However, I think
there might be a little bit of money there. It probably will never be big
enough to support the development effort that real "glitz" is going the take,
but there might be enough to help support our engineering market emphasis. 
Both markets are important, and we only addressing the needs of one right now.

 > I was attracted by their "Umbilical Forth"

Yes, that "utility" is an important side of our business, and we are giving
the chipFORTH compilers a high degree of emphasis on both the marketing and
engineering sides.

 > At that, it was a long uphill battle to convince my client to
 > spend even $1700 for a compiler.  I think if I had tried to hit
 > them for $4K (the last price I heard for the full target
 > polyForth environment) it would have been a complete "non-
 > starter".

    and from BobC:

 > Are there packages available in the 100-500 dollar range?

Good feedback, but there's not much I've been able to do about it. I'd love to
sell a $100 system (and we did for a time), but it is difficult making it cost
effective for us to maintain it.  picoFORTH was an interesting "experiment",
and not many people updated to the full blown system after they got it. 
Still, if it could just "fall out" of our normal maintenance, it might be
something to consider again.  In your case Brad, you needed the target
compiler which would obviously cost a lot more.  Did you need the system
nucleus, or could you have gotten by with a canned image of it?

 > A real pity, because I still feel quite a bit of loyalty to good
 > old polyForth.

Thanks for the loyalty Brad, and _thank you_ for the input.  I hope we can
start putting it to good use.  Maybe someday, you will be able to use pF on
some other project.

DaR
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