Subject:
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RE: Something else is needed, I think...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 3 May 1999 21:42:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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989 times
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Mark wrote:
> > The difficulty is that we will be doing a LOT of work, and someone has to
> > write the new compiler (Dave) AND the firmware (Kekoa? since you volunteered)
>
> I, for one, am not afraid of doing a little (or even a LOT) of work for something that I
> genuinely enjoy... and I'm one of the lazier people that I know! :)
Do NOT underestimate the amount of work we are talking about. I took a working
version of hFORTH for the PC and ported a few machine specific definitions and rewrote
the IO drivers and debugged and tested using GNU tools, and I have 80 hours at least
into the project. I happened to have a free week or two to do this in.
> > I hate to drone on about pbFORTH, but I went to quite a bit of work to get
> > it working as well as it is. It needs some cleaning up, sure, but the more
> > requests I get the more likely I'll do it...
>
> In my opinion, the most important thing that pbFORTH needs right now is some good
> documentation on how to A) get it into the RCX, and B) how to use it once its there.
Point taken. I'll work at improving this as I find time and requests...
> This brings up a point... why make the RCX interpret the source code into efficient
> bytecode? Instead, why not compile the code on your own machine to bytecode and
> download the bytecode directly? Certainly that would be a more compact and efficient
> solution on the RCX end of things, and would provide for the potential to enhance the
> user interface of the compiler end of things with, say, a gui front end, a source code
> editor with syntax highlighting, etc.
>
> pbForth may be a really cool solution for people who can hook up the IR port to a dumb
> terminal, but I don't see it being a terribly user-friendly and self-contained
> programming solution for the RCX at the present time, which is why I originally
> commented that I believe something else is needed.
Just because a language has a GUI toolkit does NOT make it user friendly or portable.
The Tkl/Tk toolkit runs on LOTS of platforms, but there is a steep learning curve
with ample rewards at the plateau. FORTH can be ugly to read, but it gets right down to
the metal without the need for an extensive compiler. As far as user friendly, you can
interrogate variables and run "functions" right from your keyboard. If you really want
to go places, write a Visual C++ or Java app that sends a simple ASCII stream to
your pbFORTH enabled RCX and get answers back as to what it is doing.
It is TOTALLY self contained - if you don't count NQC to get the firmware loaded in
the first place. Once it's in the RCX, you can use whatever tools you want - from a
dumb terminal to a custom Tkl/Tk GUI with dictionary optimizations and a preprocessor
to save dictionary space.
Look at the scripts, try and think RPN stack machine like an HP calculator, and a noun-verb
function paradigm...
Cheers,
Ralph Hempel - P.Eng
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Check out pbFORTH for LEGO Mindstorms at:
<http://www.bmts.com/~rhempel/lego/pbFORTH/default.html>
--------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: rhempel at bmts dot com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Something else is needed, I think...
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| (...) I don't think I am underestimating the amount of work, actually.Just because a language has a GUI toolkit does NOT make it user friendly or portable. (...) Then it's not self contained on TWO counts. One, as you mentioned, you need NQC to get (...) (25 years ago, 3-May-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Something else is needed, I think...
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| (...) C may be the best choice for a base language to start with simply because its well known. Quite frankly, if the bytecode is written reasonably well, different compilers for different base languages should be very feasible - compilers based on (...) (25 years ago, 3-May-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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