Friday, December 7, 2018

Far back IDE for Forth

I am sold on the concept, been looking closer. But I need one thing, a good string handling Forth lib. When I find that, then I am OK, I will know how to get linux command format from the thing. Right now I am a novice, not sure hw to deal with strings.

Control flow is simple, Forth is in control and emits linux commands to a console loop. I have sufficient Xchars for my needs, in linux command format. What is my net cost then?  XChars was a xcb cutnpaste, console is looping over entries and loads devices. I wrote the argument conversion, to and from argv[] when needed. That gets me to Forth right away, I have connected everything up with one universal interface.

I am missing a good Forth string lib. Get that then a day later I have ad hoc gdb GUI up, all with Forth functions. In the enterprise, the users never write or read Forth, they just get a complete environment suited to the function at hand. And it is self contained in the Forth scrip files, designed to suit the task. The efficiency is deployment, no headers, no versions, no dll hell, extremely light weight. . If something is out of whack, there is a Forth script file change due, but that is very system independent easy to keep maintained on an enterprise level. Across the enterprise from the desk top to server to embedded, a light weight universal environment manager for linux.  Cut, paste, gcc and run; never stuck on an island.

Enterprise management across OSes

Noting in the concept, any OS with a command line format will look very much like linux style, easily adapted.  There is nothing here more than byte manipulation. Across the enterprise, everything looks like a Forth initialization file, mostly defining the semantics of the enterprise function at hand. From gathering sales reports to distributing software updates to development to unique debugging environments, ad hoc basis to sqlite; within the semantic sof the task. Symbol management as function names is a great tool in Forth, uniquely sited to apply common semantics, and that is a productivity boost.

The powerful idea is running sqlite as a loadable device, then adapting its IO to Forth names and data, in RVP notation; a massive functional library for any set of tasks across the enterprise. Using a simple Xchars, no need for html complexity.

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