Re: Re-connecting

Mark & John,

> > Chuck has expressed his view on errors[1], however
> > Chuck did not write the 
> > ITV code from my understanding.

> > [1] http://www.strangegizmo.com/forth/ColorForth/msg00910.html
> >      http://www.strangegizmo.com/forth/ColorForth/msg00921.html

Proves my point about colorForth being a clean environment. The way Chuck
deals with input error conditions is 'Don't do that". For the general user
that is not an acceptable practice.

For his other comments on Catch and Throw, they are specific to _his_ end user
situation.

> Terry, nice work on your SOF.  (System on a
> floppy.)  That reminds me of the QNX "demo"
> disk.  Did you ever check that out?

Thank you. Yes, I once saw a reference to it, went to the web site and noted
what they claimed the features were but never looked at it 'cause it was
proprietary. Used its existance as motivation to put xwoaf together by
remembering that it had already been done before.

> Anyway, to me it stands to reason that if
> you can get QNX on a floppy and Linux on a
> floppy you SHOULD be able to get something
> written in colorForth that can read email 
> and browse web pages on a floppy.  Does
> this require some different thinking?  
> Of course.  If you want to communicate 
> with Aunt Bertha via email you're going
> to have to use ASCII, no way around that.
> Still I don't think files are necessarily
> a requirement.  Most email programs I've
> seen store a gazillian email messages in
> a single file.  As for navigation, I was
> impressed by the "application explorer"
> in the latest CFDOS release.  (Maybe I'm
> just easily impressed.)  ;)

I like graphical file managers that sort and select on different criteria.
Enables me to paint a new perspective on old data. 

Remembering that a 'file' is an ordered set of data, puts data objects into
the filable category. Maybe an OS file structure is not needed but some form
of 'filing' is. Unless you like sorting thru a heap on your desktop :-)

Also, if you need access to colorForth download content from external programs
you have to have some means of reading/writing external file systems. Gotta
deal with them sooner or later. Even Chuck uses DOS.

Havn't taken a look at the new CFDOS yet. Hope to be impressed.

> I think an email reader would be a good
> first cut for a "real world" colorForth
> app.  POP3 runs off UDP so you don't have
> to wait for the TCP implementation to be
> completed.

Just did a quick&dirty calculation on the oxelmo email client. It has 60,580
lines of *.[ch] source in 1568933 bytes. Figuring 1/10 the size in
colorForth that gives a rough order of 6000 lines to do an Outlook Express
functionality clone.

Regards,
Terry