Re: advantages of forth over other languages

"slava@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <slava@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes Re: advantages of forth over
other languages

> How come there are no free, well-debugged, well-do***ented libraries
> for Forth which perform the tasks you describe, such as text
> processing, web application development, GUIs, etc? 

Wait a minute, free AND well-debugged AND well-do***ented?

What do these buzz words like "free" and "well" mean exactly?

Take for instance the Bessel functions of 0 and 1st kind, for any 
complex argument < 5. How many implementations of these Forth words 
do you think there are available?

What kind of (e.g.) text processing were you thinking off? What I
have invariably found is that only very few of these words actually
get used. (In my case PLACE PLACE+ $+ Split-At-Char, Split-At-Word.)

>                                                     If it's so easy,
> why do some people in this very newsgroup admit to using Perl for text
> processing, Tcl/Tk for GUIs, and so on?

Well, speaking for myself, if it is relatively unim****tant, I use
what is available (e.g. runtime link to a standard package). If the tool 
breaks, try something else. And when that fails, grit your teeth and write
it in Forth. (Which means it will be free, debugged-for-a-single-purpose 
and undo***ented).

And when it *is* im****tant, it will be free, debugged-for-a-single-purpose

and do***ented for a domain expert. (And most probably, so tightly
integrated
with the Forth system itself that it would be a dreadful job to unhook
it.)

How would we, e.g., get a Forth GUI toolkit that fits your description?
Evidently Bernd Paysan wrote Minos, which is free,
debugged-for-his-purposes, 
and do***ented for domain & bigForth experts. To debug that further, we'd
need (1) lots of Forth programmers that want to use a GUI but (2) haven't
got a clue how to write one and (3) without strong preferences how it
should
work. To do***ent it, we'd need people that like Forth, can write, can't
debug
their way out of a wet paper bag but have a strong desire to do something 
useful. Raise hands everybody, who feels they are in these categories :-)

-marcel