Forth Dimensions/Volume 1/Number 1/Forth Mailbag

Forth Dimensions, Volume 1, No. 1
by Dave Bengel
Forth Mailbag
2715314Forth Dimensions, Volume 1, No. 1 — Forth MailbagDave Bengel

The Forth Interest Group developed from several people in the San Francisco-San Jose area who have been working on Forth for the last year and a half. Until about six months ago most of these users were unaware of each other. Until the publication of the article by John James in Dr. Dobb's Journal (May 1978), about 80 percent of the group was from the Homebrew Computer Club—whose publication should also be watched for news concerning the F.I.G.

We now have nearly 200 names on the mailing list, and are receiving about six letters a day. The writers' main question is how to get a version for their machine.

We don't yet have a detailed description of the versions of Forth now available, nor is there a standard form of the language available for various CPUs. Intense work on implementations is now underway; e.g. the Forth Interest Group implementation workshop. We will keep you informed as more documentation and systems become available.

Your answers to the questionaire in this newsletter will help us keep a mailing list for interest-specific applications, documentation, CPU versions, etc. We appreciate any information you can send us, particularly about Forth versions or variants which are running or being developed, or any software we can publish. We need your contributions to this newsletter (which we hope will grow into a journal).