figForth Refuses to Die !!
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The Forth Interest Group
“The Forth Interest Group (“FIG”) 1 was formed in 1978 by a group of Forth programmers in Northern California. It was a non-profit organisation. Its purpose was to encourage the use of Forth language by the interchange of ideas through seminars and publications. It organised a Forth Implementation Team in 1978 to develop Forth operating systems for popular microprocessors from a common language model, now known as figForth. In early 1979, the Forth Implementation Team published six assembly listings of figForth for 8080, 6800, 6502, PDP-11, 9900, and PACE at $10.00 each. The quality and availability of these listings, which are placed in the public domain, made figForth the most popular dialect in Forth”
Source: Based upon (Ting 2013, p. viii) “Preface to the First Edition” May 1981
FIG also published a newsletter called “Forth Dimensions”
These assembly listings and associated comments were known as “Forth Models”
“Most of the published materials on Forth are manuals which teach how to use a particular Forth implementation on a particular computer. Very few deal with the inner mechanisms of how the Forth system operates which is essential to the understanding and effective utilisation of the Forth language”
Source: Based upon (Ting 2013, p. viii) “Preface to the First Edition” May 1981
“Among other things, documentation on Forth is very difficult to read and to comprehend because Forth definitions are short and their numbers are many. The definitions are very hard to arrange in a logical order to promote better or easier understanding. For example, the glossary is arranged alphabetically, which is great for reference purposes. If you know which definition you are looking for, you can find it very conveniently in the glossary, but how a definition is related to others and how it is to be used are not easy to find”
Source: Based upon (Ting 2013, p. viii) “Preface to the First Edition” May 1981
figForth Refuses to Die
“The figForth Model was supposedly replaced by Forth-78, Forth-79, and Forth-83 Standards, at least that is the impressions Forth experts wanted us to believe. figForth should have been laid to rest long, long ago. In its place, there are many better, larger, and more comprehensive Forth implementations available from many vendors and also in the public domain. Why would anybody want to use this old fashioned figForth?”
Source: Based upon (Ting 2013, p. vi) “Preface to the Second Edition” April 1989
figForth possesses a very “strange magic”…
“There are many advantages in figForth which make it useful to many programmers and new students of Forth
Here is a list:”
- “Consistency. It is a single model implemented uniformly on many microprocessors. Many implementations are readily available in assembly listings”
- “Well factored kernel. Less than 50 words are machine dependent. All other words are defined in high level. It is easily portable to other microprocessors and operating systems”
- “The source code is in regular assembly language, which can be understood by some programmers”
- “Most other Forth systems are generated through meta compilation, and the source code are only available in Forth. The Forth source listing is difficult for Forth programmer to understand, let alone non-Forth programmers”
- “Simplicity. It provides only the functionality to be self-supporting. Lacking of extensive and complicated utility makes it easier to study and comprehend”
“Generally, it is impossible to study and understand a commercial Forth system. The source code is not available in most cases. Where the source code is provided, it is too complicated to be dissected and to be put back together again. For people who are curious about how Forth really ticks, figForth is the only Forth system that an average person can understand in a couple of weeks. It is also easy to port figForth to a virgin computer un-adulterated by a prior Forth implementation. This I found ten years ago, and I think it is still true today. We have no valid alternative in teaching and learning Forth besides this old figForth“
Source: Based upon (Ting 2013, p. vi) “Preface to the Second Edition” April 1989 (My Emphasis)
“After more than 30 years, I can still remember the excitements we shared in the SVFIG meetings, and the enlightenment we felt when we took the figForth listings and got the first OK from our microcomputers. 2 We got the magic wand which turned pumpkins into chariots”
Source: (Ting 2013, p. vi) “Preface to the Third Edition” July 2013
Quoting from “A Systems Guide to figForth” by Dr Ting
“A Systems Guide to figForth” by Dr Ting
How I was introduced to figForth
TBD
6502 figForth on the Commodore PET
TBD
figForth HAS DIED, But May Still be Resurrected…
Baremetal Engineer Extraordinaire, David Husband believes he has discovered a number of astounding functional equivalences between a number of figForth words, structures and internal processes, etc, and between some other, seemingly unrelated and unconnected processes in another major knowledge domain…
As part of his Ph.d project, he is currently working very hard at researching, verifying, validating and documenting his beliefs in the form of a scientific publication for release at some future date…
References:
Ting, C. H., 2013. Systems Guide to fig-Forth [online]. 3rd ed. San Mateo, CA 94402, USA: Offete Enterprises, Inc. Available from: http://figforth.org.uk/library/Systems.Guide.to.figForth.pdf.
fig-(US), n.d. Forth Interest Group - US. Forth Dimensions [online]. Available from: Http://figforth.org.uk/library/Forth.Dimensions-FIG/.
fig-(UK), n.d. Forth Interest Group - UK. Forthwrite [online]. Available from: Http://figforth.org.uk/library/Forthwrite-FIG.UK/.