colorForth

[Tom Novelli]

Chuck Moore has finally released Color Forth into the public domain... I've 
messed with it and deciphered most of the kernel code.. it's pretty cool. 
Although it runs without an OS, it's more of a language than an OS. Chuck 
considers operating systems unnecesary.

ColorForth achieves several of the TUNES goals, albeit in a simplistic manner. 
Among them:
  * It's free - public domain, open source, you name it.. and it favors the 
distribution of source code.
  * Source is encoded in a compact, structured binary form. Color (or other 
visual effects) are used instead of punctuation, which makes for very readable 
code even without formatting.
  * Compilation is instantaneous because most of the work is done in the 
editor. Migration of object code is unnecessary.
  * The source encoding opens up several possibilities - metaprogramming, 
reflection, intermingling other languages with Forth (LISP and Assembler 
should work well.. I'm experimenting with these myself)
  * The user interface is notable.. it only uses 27 keys, which change 
function depending on context; a keymap is displayed in the corner of the 
screen. The display is constantly redrawn, so a memory dump, for example, 
shows changes as they happen. Interesting :)

References:
   http://www.colorforth.com
   http://www.ultratechnology.com
   http://www.users.qwest.net/~loveall/ModProg.htm
   http://sleepless-night.com/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/ColorForth