Xref: utzoo comp.lang.forth:893 comp.sys.amiga:32975
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!thomson
From: thomson@wasatch.utah.edu (Rich Thomson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Query about Amiga Forth's
Keywords: Amiga, Forth
Message-ID: <1693@wasatch.utah.edu>
Date: 30 Apr 89 07:38:58 GMT
References: <934@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Organization: Oasis Technologies
Lines: 48

In article <934@syma.sussex.ac.uk> marksm@syma.susx.ac.uk
    (Mark S Madsen) writes:
>I have what appears to be a freely distributable Forth implementation on
>an Amuse disk. (It bears a header saying that it comes from Mountain
>Valley Press.)
 ^^^^^^ Do you mean Mountain View Press?

>I would also be interested to hear of any other Amiga Forth's, either
>commercial or freely distributable, and what the net's opinions are. I

I believe this is a demo version of Mountain View Press' FORTH that is
ported to the Amiga.  I am currently unaware of a commercial implementation
for the Amiga by MVP.  There are two commercial FORTH implementations for
the Amiga: CSI's Multi-FORTH and Delta Research's JFORTH.  I currently own
M-F but am planning on purchasing JF real soon now.  CSI created their
product as a spin-off from their Mac product.  Personally, I don't think
they see the Amiga as they main market and treat the product accordingly.
Their manual is nice in a tutorial sense but horrible in a reference and I
find it incomplete.  They also had a tendency to rename certain Amiga ROM
routine calls in preference of keeping the name for their own environment
(the most blatant example being a renaming of Intuition's OpenWindow to
iOpenWindow).  This causes a problem because you don't find out about the
changes without peering through their include files.  This should have been
clearly spelled out in a manual section; I fear it wasn't because the
manual was also lifted from the Mac product.  JF was developed specifically
for the Amiga environment and has a number of extensions that MF just can't
claim.  Of course, JF is more expensive than MF, but if I was making the
decision right now between the two I would buy JF with the things I know
now.

I am not aware of any documentation for the MVP FORTH that appeared on a
Fish Disk (I believe this is what you have), except that it is conforming
to the FORTH83 standard.  Other than that, you might have to contact MVP
for more information.

Of course, you might want to look at A4th which is a PD FORTH implementation
for the Amiga that is fully documented with source code, etc.  It's available
by anonymous FTP from cs.utah.edu in the pub/amiga directory.  In addition
you might want to check out the Amiga FORTH Programmer's Mailing List, of
which I am the humble maintainer.  Traffic has been low lately, but there
are back issues also available by FTP from the above address.

					-- Rich
-- 
Rich Thomson	thomson@cs.utah.edu  {bellcore,hplabs}!utah-cs!thomson
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with
us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain
too cheap, we esteem too lightly." Thomas Paine, _The Crisis_, Dec. 23rd, 1776