18 Sep 2003 mslicker   » (Journeyer)

I take partial responsibility for the argumentative direction of chalst's article. Apologies to chalst.

GNU/Linux

I'm beginning to reconcile myself with GNU/Linux. In particular I think it is perhaps the ultimate legacy system. Making a system compatible with every exisiting public and proprietary standard is no easy task and certainly not a desirable one. Even if the mind set is still within the proprietary realm, the software is generally more friendly, open and acessible. GNU/Linux is certainly a positive result and a step in the right direction.

colorForth

With colorForth I decided to move the editor out of the kernel. The editor is the only application included in the kernel and requires graphics and input available in the kernel. With the editor in colorForth source, there is more flexibility in implementing the graphics and input. Besides this colorForth will be easier to port, as the editor is currently a signifigant application implemented purely in x86 assembly.

With editor in source, I'd like to implement the graphics in GLX/OpenGL and the input in X11. This will result in one C file which will be the bridge from the archaic disorderly world of Linux to the orderly logical world of colorForth. I think the words implemented in C will simply be passed to colorForth as a symbol table. This way C can handle all the linking and loading of libraries. This is also how XcolorForth works, except C words do not become part of the dictionary.

The point of all this, is that colorForth will be suitable for C platform applications while keeping the simplicty and interactivity of native version. The troubling part is of course all these layers of complexity that are present, and all the possible bugs that are not related to your code. Of course this is the result in any C platform based application development. Abstracting from the C functions at least the colorForth code can be easily ported from compromised state to the native state.

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