Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!pitt!willett!ForthFAQ From: ForthFAQ@willett.pgh.pa.us (FAQ account for comp.lang.forth) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Forth FAQ: Applications done with Forth. (l/m 07.Nov.93) Message-ID: <4830.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> Date: 15 Dec 93 01:40:07 GMT Expires: Wed, 22 Dec 93 23:59:59 EDT References: <4819.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> Followup-To: poster Lines: 165 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.lang.forth:14711 comp.answers:3026 news.answers:15824 Archive-name: ForthFaq/Applications Last-modified: 07.Nov.93 Version: 1.2 [Thanks to everyone who has contributed information for this message. I have left the header and/or .signature lines in for attribution. Missing or incorrect attributions are a mistake... please help me correct any that are wrong. -dwp] If Forth has been around for 20+ years, what has it been used for? ********************************************************************** Date: 16 Jun 1993 16:15:25 -0400 (EDT) From: koopman@cagate.res.utc.com (Philip Koopman) Message-Id: <9306162015.AA22610@casun2.res.utc.com> Elizabeth Rather's HOPL paper contains a number of examples (I don't have time to type them all in). SIGPLAN Notices vol. 28 no. 3, March 1993. CMU and Pitt probably both have copies. [I haven't had the time to look this up yet. If anyone has a copy handy and wants to send me the info, I would appreciate it. -dwp] ********************************************************************** Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 14:34:28 bst Message-Id: <9306091334.AA27065@hpc.lut.ac.uk> From: Merlin (MERLIN) A few years ago, I used a homebrew (well, I did it at the office...) FORTH on the Atari ST to produce a conversion of a C64 game called OOPS - a kind of real-time logic puzzle based around symmetrical grids, designed by a guy called Jason Kendall from Salisbury, England. This received very good reviews in the C64 version. Unfortunately, shortly after we delivered the 16 bit versions (PC, ST and Amiga - only the ST in FORTH, the rest in Assembler), the publisher, The Big Apple Entertainment Co Ltd (who despite their name were based in London) was closed down by its parent company, so the ST version was never released. A little while after, I left CygnusSoft to go and run a pub for a couple of years, so my ST FORTH never got used again - although I've still got a copy, if only I can find someone with an ST... In addition to all this boring reminiscence, In 1984-85 I worked for a digital systems engineering company called Jasmin Electronics, then based in Leicester, England, who used FORTH for all their software at that time. Their speciality was in Teletext systems. There's at least one Cable TV station in California who provided a Teletext service using Jasmin kit - one of the first things I worked on for them was a FORTH system that took news straight off the AP wire and formatted it into pages that were included directly into the Teletext magazine. The railway stations and airports of (at least) Europe are also littered with Jasmin Teletext information display systems, which were all, originally at least, written in FORTH. They also did a water pumping control system for the Rickmansworth area of England - it used a WAN of proprietary 68000-based kit, was grossly underpowered for the job, and was delivered massively late and over budget, which must have been why their salaries were so lousy... :-) [Email address from .signature: hunuf@lut.ac.uk -dwp] ********************************************************************** Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1993 00:17:39 -0500 (CDT) From: "Christopher A. Bongaarts" Message-Id: Adventure Construction Set, by Stuart Smith. Published by Electronic Arts. The Commodore 64 version was written in forth, and this game featured incredible music and very good graphics (if you don't mind 160x200x4 graphics!) =-=-=-=-=-= Chris Bongaarts =-=-=-= Sir Taxi of the Wild Crew =-=-=-=-=-= Internet: bong0004@student.tc.umn.edu FidoNet 1:282/54 "Chris Bongaarts" taxi@tdkt.kksys.com Call the Game Center (612)942-7531 From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) Subject: Southern Wisconsin FIG Chapter News Message-ID: <4638.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> Date: 9 Jul 93 10:53:26 GMT [Message has been editted for relevant excerpts. -dwp] Message 2 Thu Jul 08, 1993 D.RUSKE1 [Dave] at 11:52 EDT After about half an hour of conversation amongst the group, Dave Ruske gave a talk about the use of Forth in two embedded applications done for ICOM, Inc. The first was an 8031-based operator access panel for an Allen-Bradley PLC-2; the second was a driver which loads onto the Allen-Bradley KT card (a Z80- based network card for PLC communications). LMI Metacompilers were used on both projects. Dr. Bob Lowenstein of Yerkes Observatory told the group about Yerk and how it is applied to telescope control and data acquisition. Yerk is an object-oriented Forth variant for the Mac, and is a public-domain product derived from Neon. One of the things Dr. Lowenstein uses this for is remotely controlling a telescope in New Mexico via the Internet. Yerk software will also be used to control two new telescopes being built at the South Pole. Matt Mercaldo showed and talked about the Modular Microprocessor Trainer being developed for use at Johns-Hopkins University. The unit uses two Motorola MC68HC11A8s with New Micros' Max-Forth on chip. The student can prototype projects on the unit and communicate with it using a terminal, or a keyboard and built-in LCD display. Matt provided the group with copies of a paper describing his work. Glenn Szejna described his use of Forth at Nicolet Instruments. Several people in the group had used Nicolet oscilloscopes, unaware that Glenn's Forth code was running under the hood. Scott Woods discussed his use of Forth, including his current project, firmware for an industrial metal detector. This device will be used for such things as preventing machine screws from showing up in your breakfast cereal. Olaf Meding described Amtelco's use of polyForth in programming their systems for telephone answering services [see Olaf's article "Forth-Based Message Service" in the January/February 1993 Forth Dimensions]. The Amtelco EVE (Electronic Video Exchange] system is the largest and most sophisicated system of its kind, and has gained 70% of the answering service market. James Heichek demonstrated VORCOMP, a public-domain directory and file compare utility written in his own version of Forth. James talked about why he believed the stack manipulation words in Forth became a hindrance to his work, and how he added local variables to clean up his code. He is currently developing educational software. Olaf Meding gave a brief tour of the "Introduction to Forth" disk and demonstrated the loading of C. H. Ting's tutorial in F-PC. Along the way, the F-PC single-step debugger was also demonstrated. According to Julian V. Noble, the "Introduction to Forth" disk "was prepared and disseminated by Prof. Julian V. Noble of the University of Virginia, with the kind permission of the authors of the tutorials and files thereon (C.H. Ting, Jack Brown, Phil Koopman and me), as a public service, under the auspices of FIG, ACM/SIGForth and Mechum Banks Publishing." By this time it was past 10 pm and the meeting began to break up, but Dr. Lowenstein took some time to demonstrate Yerk and impart some insider knowledge to Paul Anderson. Paul is new to Forth and plans on building a system to monitor and control model railroads via a Mac. [Any inaccuracies in this report are solely my fault. -DR] --- If you have any questions about ForthNet/comp.lang.forth or any information to add/delete or correct in this message or any suggestions on formatting or presentation, please contact Doug Philips at one of the following addresses: Internet: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us Usenet: ...!uunet!willett.pgh.pa.us!dwp GEnie: D.PHILIPS3