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From: dxf <dxforth@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: THROW codes and ambiguous conditions
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2025 13:10:36 +1000
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On 7/06/2025 7:06 am, sean@conman.org wrote:
> ...
> A goal of my Forth system was to only have standard Forth words.

You trust the Standard.  Why?  The Standard dates backs to 1977 starting out as
a list of words pulled from Kitt Peak Forth.  If KPF didn't have (.) etc well
that was just too bad.  The point being nobody sat down and systematically
designed the standard (or forth) ground up.  It was adhoc.  It's always been
adhoc.  Moore has changed his mind numerous times.  What one sees in the Standard
is a snapshot of 1977.  Naturally if there were issues with standard words,
committees would attempt to fix them.  But a rational synthesis of Forth, the
standard is not.  One finds that out quickly enough when one starts writing
applications.  It's no coincidence commercial forths have always gone beyond what
the standard offered and that there are no 'standard forth applications' to speak of.

Even small forths can do better than what the standard offers by simply factoring
out tools already present e.g.

(.)  (D.)  (U.)  /CHAR  >CHAR  >DIGIT  HELD  MU*  MU/MOD  TRIM  UNNEST

I'd rather have these than all the support for wordlists DEFER and other stuff
the standard and folks have obsessed over.