2024-03-13 00:14:05 <zelgomer    > i have always been a tabs indenter and forth is causing me to reevaluate this
2024-03-13 02:45:18 <Al2O3       > good, cause block space is crucial in forth block programming
2024-03-13 02:45:46 <Al2O3       > white space is at times nice, and useful, but reading code like paragraphs is best, keeping paragraphs/blocks short, sweet, and to the point.
2024-03-13 02:46:04 <Al2O3       > I have seen forth written and white/tab spaced, and its hillarious.
2024-03-13 02:49:24 <zelgomer    > i'm not doing block stuff, kind of doubt i ever will. we live in a filesystem world and i don't see much reason right now to buck that. but i do find that forth often flows a lot nicer when you vertically line things up, and spaces just tend to be better for it
2024-03-13 03:14:32 <Al2O3       > if you have an example of what you're doing or considering, please share.
2024-03-13 03:14:53 <Al2O3       > white space in the day for PIC or small memory editor and file systems where in the 70s and 80s prime, I thought you were going there.
2024-03-13 03:15:39 <Al2O3       > so I misunderstood you, but realize that tabs don't work for your vision and use of forth.
2024-03-13 08:23:24 <veltas      > zelgomer: I'm using tabs more, even in Forth.  Why would Forth change this?
2024-03-13 13:28:29 <zelgomer    > when i write c, i tend to write it like it was formatted by a pretty printer. indentation is strictly by scope, single spaces between tokes, etc. i make no effort to vertically align similar things, like several lines in a row of variable initializations.
2024-03-13 13:29:45 <zelgomer    > imo there are cases, at least in my current forth style, where i will have several similar lines in a row and it just looks like less of a jumbled mess if i kind of tabulate them
2024-03-13 13:30:54 <zelgomer    > so even though i tend to use tabs for indenting, there tend to be a lot of spaces for alignment, and that makes me consider maybe it should be spaces everywhere
2024-03-13 13:31:27 <zelgomer    > maybe not, idk. there also just isn't a lot of indenting in forth
2024-03-13 13:48:56 <veltas      > I just use a mix of tabs and spaces, it's what everyone's done since days of yore
2024-03-13 13:49:31 <veltas      > I think only recently have people started trying to write tab-size-agnostic code and it's not really possible to do that
2024-03-13 13:50:20 <veltas      > Line length limits for instance aren't tab-size-agnostic
2024-03-13 13:52:45 <zelgomer    > ah yeah, that's the other reason i forgot about :) i'm trying to limit myself to 64 columns, and 8-column tabs eat up a lot of that. you might say it's almost an eighth!
2024-03-13 13:53:09 <veltas      > You can choose whatever size tabs you want, and stick to it
2024-03-13 13:53:46 <crc         > 
ACTION gave up on using tabs for indention a long time ago

2024-03-13 14:40:44 <veltas      > Tabs don't work well with block editors that treat each row/col pair as a unique position in the block
2024-03-13 14:41:26 <veltas      > Although it's been discussed having a "block editor" that just lets you use tabs and newlines and write short files limited to 1 block in size
2024-03-13 14:43:54 <veltas      > And there's an argument for just writing files with spaces only because we're not exactly running out of bytes
2024-03-13 14:44:46 <veltas      > I have to be super careful I don't use too much whitespace on my cheap 256 billion byte SSD!
2024-03-13 17:24:59 <Al2O3       > ah, tabs and spaces, like vi and emacs, C vs COBOL, or Perl vs Ruby, wonderful religion :)
2024-03-13 17:25:45 <Al2O3       > at one point, it was encouraged by some to put at the top of a file, what the file was formatted for 1..N spaces for a tab, etc.
2024-03-13 19:37:12 <lf94        > What's currently the simplest implemented forth in x86_64 assembly
2024-03-13 19:38:03 <lf94        > What are forth users' opinion on colorForth as well? It seems like a wonderful idea.
2024-03-13 19:40:44 <lispmacs[work]> lf94: I'm not sure about the simplest, but one you might be interested in is smithforth
2024-03-13 19:41:01 <lispmacs[work]> the primitives are hand coded in machine code
2024-03-13 19:41:11 <lispmacs[work]> i.e., no assembler
2024-03-13 19:41:40 <lispmacs[work]> sectorforth is also interesting
2024-03-13 19:42:03 <lispmacs[work]> that is 16-bit, however
2024-03-13 19:42:13 <lispmacs[work]> but fits in a 512-byte boot sector
2024-03-13 19:53:14 <lf94        > Surely there's an x86_64 variant out there
2024-03-13 19:53:34 <lispmacs[work]> smithforth is x86_64
2024-03-13 19:54:02 <lispmacs[work]> but handcoded in machine language, rather than assembly language
2024-03-13 20:04:49 <lf94        > Ah! Ok, sorry. I misunderstood. That's pretty awesome and honestly...even better heh
2024-03-13 20:07:19 <lf94        > This is...this is incredible.
2024-03-13 20:11:32 <veltas      > lf94: There's this too: https://github.com/mark4th/x64
2024-03-13 20:15:49 <veltas      > And there's a number of people in here and ##asm who can help if you want to write one or develop one, want suggestions for how to do it
2024-03-13 20:16:31 <veltas      > And there's this series of articles on approaches to writing Forths efficiently with all the relevant terminology https://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/moving1.htm
2024-03-13 20:56:56 <lf94        > Awesome resources, thank you. SmithForth's machine code .dmp file is nuts. Whoever wrote this is absolutely an expert in x86_64 and probably other assembly.
2024-03-13 20:57:08 <lf94        > Or I'm a bad programmer. :)
2024-03-13 21:26:04 <lf94        > No one know's Chuck's email eh
2024-03-13 21:26:46 <lf94        > https://gist.github.com/lf94/ac13edb98b46ab300cd8008610f851a3 maybe you guys can answer what he would say. :p
2024-03-13 21:28:36 <Al2O3       > lf94 you talking about Mr. Forth?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Moore
2024-03-13 21:28:49 <veltas      > lf94: Believe it or not it's not actually too hard to work with x86 machine code, especially as most of it was designed before everyone had assemblers
2024-03-13 21:29:11 <veltas      > I've also heard it's easier to work with x86 in octal than hex
2024-03-13 21:29:27 <veltas      > There's not a massive number of instructions necessary to write a forth
2024-03-13 21:29:52 <veltas      > And working with machine code directly is a good exercise sometimes, but not necessarily the best way to be an 'expert' in an arch or assembly
2024-03-13 21:32:00 <veltas      > I think the most useful thing about smithforth is it's whet a lot of people's appetite for forth and x86
2024-03-13 21:45:18 <lf94        > Al2O3: yea :)
2024-03-13 21:45:31 <lf94        > Wait, Chuck, why am I saying Chuck
2024-03-13 21:45:54 <lf94        > Ah, because he does go by Chuck. You made me double-take there.
2024-03-13 21:46:09 <veltas      > It's rare I see anyone call him something else
2024-03-13 21:46:23 <GeDaMo      > "x86 is an octal machine" https://gist.github.com/seanjensengrey/f971c20d05d4d0efc0781f2f3c0353da
2024-03-13 21:46:50 <thrig       > if a wood chuck could chuck words
2024-03-13 21:49:36 <veltas      > GeDaMo always dropping those hot links
2024-03-13 21:49:59 <GeDaMo      > I link therefore I am :P
2024-03-13 23:45:07 <lf94        > No one can answer the questions I've got for Chuck?