Question about displaying text

On 26/12/06 John Drake wrote: 

Hello all,

I've made some progess on the Primary ColorForth
tutorial.  For one thing I added the formatting
to the "editor" chapter Jeff did....

Nice work, John & Jeff.  I've sampled both and learnt as well as enjoyed the clean yet colourful layout.  Comments:  

1. Maybe < erase > ought to be mentioned among the editor instructions, for erasing whole blocks before edit.  Chuck wrote in his User Guide: 

"< 63 99 erase > will zero blocks 63-161. This readies them for Editor" 

   Thus < 22 2 erase > would clear block 22 and its shadow block 23

2.  After doing the "Get you started" exercise, I posted something on the blog there: font can be redesigned using Chuck's ikon editor, block 34; plus hints how to do it. Since then I found that Howerd Oakford's CF for DOS (see Howerd's website) has added something to Chuck's ikon keyboard that makes it even easier: a little yellow < t > to toggle the pixels.
Howerd's CF also has more characters available for < emit >.  

    Are these the sort of simple, hands-on comments that you are looking for on this project?   


3.  John also wrote:  "... there HAS to be a better way. How canI get 
ColorForth to differentiate between short words like "hello" that get 
packed into a single 32 bit word and longer words like "bookends" that 
take 2 32 bit words?"

      I too found this introduced ambiguity  when doing calculations, 
some  years ago.  Meanwhile, I  just accept it as a quirky CF taste for 
brevity, and when I use long names I put distinguishing characters first 
eg 1bookends, 2bookerwashington, 3bookmaker etc.   


Wishing you all a Merry Post-Winter-Solstice and a Happy New Year

Nick Maroudas