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From: LANGOWSKI@FREMBL51.BITNET (Joerg Langowski / EMBL Grenoble)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth for Macs
Message-ID: <8901190346.AA17232@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 89 22:04:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List <FIGI-L%SCFVM.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 35

The two commercial Forth implementations for the Mac that are really
worth talking about are
1. Mach2, from Palo Alto Shipping Co., POB 7430, Menlo Park, CA 94026,
   (415)854-7994 or (800)44-FORTH
and
2. MacForth, from Creative Solutions Inc., 4701 Randolph Road, Suite 12,
   Rockville, MD 20852, (301)984-3530 or (800)367-8465.

Both have a large user base and lots of examples, Mach2 on GEnie and MacForth
on Compuserve. Mach2 is a subroutine-threaded, multi-segment implementation
that generates native machine code so that one can write DAs, XCMDs etc.
easily; its toolbox support follows very closely that of Inside Mac.
MacForth is a token-threaded implementation with lots of the toolbox
support hidden from the programmer through its own implementation of Mac
toolbox calls. Therefore, MacForth has about twice as many predefined
words than Mach2. I personally prefer Mach2 with its sparser set of words
(KISS philosophy) and its code which is native 68000/68020 and runs about
twice as fast as typical MacForth code.
Bothe systems, BTW, are multitasking. They are available through software
retailers like Computerware. Prices should be around $80 for Mach2 and about
$150 for MacForth Plus.
There is, furthermore, a pretty good public domain Forth for the Mac,
PocketForth, which comes in a DA and application version, so you can also
create DAs with that one. It is a subroutine threaded 16bit implementation
and approaches the speed of Mach2 for some problems. I could post it to
the net. I haven't been able to reach the author, Chris Heilman, yet,
since he gives only a Compuserve address and I can@t reach that from
Frenchieland, but if he reads this, please, I'd like a copy of the
sources.
That's it.
Joerg Langowski
EMBL, c/o ILL
156X
F-38042 Grenobyl Cedex
France