Is interpret/compile the wrong distinction?

I've been thinking about Jonah Thomas's comment (back toward the
beginning of this month) that there is a bunch of unnecessary
complexity around IMMEDIATE/POSTPONE/etc and the divide between
interpretation and compilation semantics.

Coming mostly from languages other than Forth, it seems to me that
the complexity comes from Forth offering the wrong choice to the
programmer.  I *think* that what I normally want as a programmer
is a distinction between syntax and semantics (parse time and
"run" time).

For instance, I want the behavior of S" to be: parse a string
delimited by a double-quote, and add a string literal to the
current "statement", regardless of whether or not I'm inside a
definition.

: CHAR  PARSE-WORD DROP C@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 LITERAL ; SYNTAX
: S"  CHAR " PARSE SLITERAL ; SYNTAX

It would, of course, add a bit of complexity to the compiler.  But
I think it simplifies things for the programmer.  And it has the
advantage that each name only ever has one piece of code attached
to it.  And I believe you could have ANS compliance with basically
just:

TRUE CONSTANT STATE
' SYNTAX ALIAS IMMEDIATE

I haven't implemented this, and of course I've skipped all the
details here; I just wanted to present the basic idea.  Thoughts?

--Josh