Re: The strengths of FORTH

On Mar 27, 10:15 pm, Jonah Thomas <jethom...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> If Forth is everything we can choose to do in Forth, then Forth is
> everything.

> But if Forth is only what Forth enforces, then Forth is nothing.

Aha, and thus Dr. Ting's reference to footsteps in an empty valley.

My distinction here is different. A source text is a member of
Forth society to the extent that it itself is Forth, including
sources in Forth that you can download and put into a place
where it can find it and include or require it from within
Forth.

Given Forth's extreme range of implementations, where you can
find sets of implementations that are mutually exclusive in
terms of what they make of a given source, there is no such
thing as a source text that is generically Forth.

For a few limited source texts, its possible to say that they
are members of the Forth-94 source text society.

Every working source text is a member of the source text
society for the implementation they were programmed on.

And there is a middle range of source texts that are members
of a social Forth group that includes more than one widely
used Forth implementation.

Being social animals who grew up in complex societies where
different social groups are members of larger social groups
and contain distinct subgroups, it is not hard for people to
understand this kind of hierarchy.

So from that perspective, where the focus of grouping is in
the terms that are natural for us, the paradigmatic membershhip
of the group, rather than the highly artificial grouping in
terms of the boundaries of group membership ... Forth is the
normal kind of shorthand generic reference to some place in
that hierarchy of Forth's, and if there is confusion as to
which position in the hierarchy is being talked about, just
clarify which position is being talked about and proceed as
before.

Forth, and I am talking about Forth-94 here, ...
Forth, and I am talking about Machine Forth here, ...

.... is perfectly clear in meaning for any sensible person paying
attention and not trying to be deliberately disruptive.

And no source text file is expected to include all of how
it gets from the basic programming language to the process
being programmed ... if the inclusion of the support file
is within the terms of the type of Forth we are talking about,
and that support file is socially available, then the source
is in Forth (of that type).

But, yes, that depends on what "in" is taken to mean.