Typing ColorForth...version 3.0

Cliche of the day: The third time's a charm

I've now extended my ColorForth text display library to the place where it's as "non-tedious" to use as possible. The first step was to be able to unpack and "type" a word rather than having to look up ColorForth charecter codes and emit them one at a time. The second step was to be able to print multiple words at one shot. That was in version 2.0. But the problem there was that I either had to put the number of words on the stack, or store them in the string variable itself. Now, after some brainstorming on the c4th IRC channel, I've come up with working code that figures out for itself how many words to type. Here it is.

s 0 hello , i speak forth
type fffffff0 and unpack if emit type ; then drop drop ;
nextw dup @ type space 1 + ;
tag f and ;
?ncom tag -9 + drop ;
print 1 +
ploop dup @ ?ncom if drop ; then nextw ploop ;
greet show text s print ;

A few notes here. Due to the way "print" works I couldn't use the old "nxtw" definition. So I modified it and changed the name. Also note, for those obsessing over lines of code (despite the fact that just about everyone knows that's no longer a good measure of program size, complexity or "tediousness") the above can be "compressed" into less lines, though IMO at the cost of readability.

s 0 hello , i speak forth
type fffffff0 and unpack if emit type ; then drop drop ;
print dup @ f and -9 + drop if drop then ; dup @ type space 1 + print ;
greet show text s 1 + print ;

There you have it. Four lines of ColorForth. (Or 3 lines depending upon where you put your variable.)

type fffffff0 and unpack if emit type ; then drop drop ; s 0 hello , i speak forth
print dup @ f and -9 + drop if drop then ; dup @ type space 1 + print ;
greet show text s 1 + print ;

And for the "ultra minimalist" (who doesn't want to bother with the tedium of looking up ColorForth charecter codes) you can do a simple "hello world" in 2 lines.

type fffffff0 and unpack if emit type ; then drop drop ; s 0 hello world
ok show text s dup push 1 + @ type 0 emit pop 2 + @ type ;

But that code isn't very robust. What happens when the string you want to type grows from 2 words to 6 as in "hello world, what a lovely day"? Still, that beats the pants off of emitting each charecter one at a time.

Anyway, this is the last I'm do anything with "hello world" programs for a while. I've got enough now to finish all of the examples in Starting Forth (chapter 1 anyway) with a minimum of tedium. This does remind me of how Chuck Moore answered the question of "hello world" programs on the ColorForth mailing list.

I've noticed the interest people have in getting colorForth to say "Hello
World".

The facility for doing that is extremely simple. Find an empty block. Edit
"Hello World" at the top.

I know that's not quite what they have in mind. But it's the way I'd
generate any sort of display. Format a block with the editor. Fill in
whatever numbers or graphics are required.

Gotta love it! "Hello world" in a single line and no need for tedious charecter code look ups and emits! Honestly though, that's what got me (and others) thinking about the "unpack" method of displaying text. The ColorForth to my understanding works by unpacking and displaying all of the 32 bit words in a block of code. But it's smart enough to understand compile words, macros, comments, numbers ect and choose the correct color and font. Right now the method I'm using only recognizes comments from non comments so it can't properly handle capitalization. But it should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer how to fix that. Perhaps I'll leave that as a "student exercise". :)