RE: new color

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, howerd.oakford wrote:

> Hi Mark,
>
> I think the orange token colour could be useful.
>
> BTW could you explain the use of 'defer' in your 'accept' code, especially
> the occurance of 'defer drop' as a phrase.
> I'm sure I could work it out for myself, given time...

The effect of defer here is to return the address some code I have 
defined. I do this so I can build the table you see near the end of the 
code. This table has the effect of a state transition table, for each 
state there are five actions which are executed depending on the keyboard 
input. The first action is a do nothing action, the next three implement 
the thumb keys, the last action handles the remaining keys. The kernel 
implements this a bit differently, but the effect is the same. While 
using colorForth, you will see these state changes represented visually 
in the corner of the screen.

It is possible that I could define a jump table here, but I want to keep 
the addresses absolute, so they can be changed later on by the editor. A 
similer situatation, occurs in the compiler, since the meaning of each 
color must be easily changable by writing to a table of functions. Maybe 
defer is the best solution here, and it doesn't warrant a new color. The 
new color is somewhat apealing since, the address is something already in 
the dictionary, the object code and source code can be more compact, and 
it very simple to implement this new color.

Mark