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From: toma@tekchips.UUCP (Tom Almy)
Newsgroups: net.lang.forth
Subject: Re: FIGIL DIGEST
Message-ID: <338@tekchips.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 11:05:12 EST
Article-I.D.: tekchips.338
Posted: Mon Nov  4 11:05:12 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Nov-85 03:45:06 EST
References: <8510110938.AA09626@UCB-VAX.ARPA> <8510211813.AA09575@UCB-VAX> <603@baylor.UUCP>
Reply-To: toma@tekchips.UUCP (Tom Almy)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 29
Summary: 

In article <603@baylor.UUCP> peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> I would suggest polyForth from Forth, Inc as a professional, consistent,
>> and well-documented implementation of the language for the IBM-PC. I have
>> several years of experience using various Forths in different projects
>
>So have I, and PolyForth fails badly in one important respect:
>
>	THE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM DOES NOT RUN UNDER MS-DOS.
>
	
According to their latest price sheet they have seen the error of their
ways.  There is now a generic MS-DOS version.  There is also a standalone
version that used IBM ROM BIOS calls (the original version bypassed the
BIOS and would not run on my otherwise PC Clone).

Personally, I don't like several things about polyForth -- they seem to be
very nonstandard (funny vocabulary implementation, screwball assembler), and
their documentation is hard to follow.  The system is so minimal that error
messages are indecipherable and the user interface is fairly unfriendly.
Theirs is the only Forth I have seen where if you type in a colon definition
that is more than one line long, you have to put a "]" at the start of each
additional line.  They also don't provide a WORDS or VLIST word.

I have been very satisfied using Laboratory Microsystems Forths, but I should
point out some bias in that I have some products (native code compilers) sold
by them.  But then the reason that I have given them my compilers to sell is 
that I had been a satisfied customer.

Tom Almy