rideau@clipper.ens.fr

[dufrp@oricom.ca]

I'd like to become the Review subproject maintainer
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 15:12:22 -0500
Message-Id: <20122264609052@oricom.ca>

I'd like to become the Review subproject maintainer.
That is, if it is not already occupied by someone else.

Well, I have tried to understand these last days what this project is
all about. And I have found that it is a very much complex project.

First I have tought to contribute to the i386 subproject. My understanding
is that in old times it was written in TASM, then port to as86+m4 (m4
being a macro language if understand well), and now all that code will
have to be written back into our new asm86x(?) which is written in our
new HLL- language which is a subset of our to come HLL written in Scheme
(more precisly from the Elk 3.0 implementation of Scheme, and will soon
support the Stk implementation as well) and which asm86x(?) is the new
assembler that we will used to make our Forth LLL (Low-Level language),
and the base of the booting process provided by the i386 subproject.

It is my understanding that there is actually as86+m4 code to be translated
in our new assember. In what internal version this code to be translated is?
I think I read 0.0.0.20, but it seems so far away that I don't believe it.

My understanding was that we used a simple assembler, to make a simple Forth,
that we make evolve in writing Forth in Forth to the point of having a new
implementation of H-- written in Forth rather than Scheme.
But now we seem to use a high-level written assembler to make our Forth.
Seems very strange to me. Does the forth will implement his own assembler,
or will it make assembler code to be assembled by an assembler (I don't see
how it could use a assembler written in HLL- which it is supposed to 
implement.)

Anyway, since my machine is a relatively small one (386sx-16Mhz, one 40Mb
HD, another 80Mb HD, 3Mb of RAM) I am using plain DOS. And I don't think
I could use Elk 3.0 Scheme. I have however installed the Texas Instrument
Scheme on it. But since I have been trained in a C++ world, I have still
to learn it before using it. I'm still trying to find a good tutorial of
Scheme on the net. I hope not to have to truncated html files if I 
work on them because of the DOS file system.

And since more I look to the project, more I feel ignorant, I think the best
way I could contribute to this project would be to read more, and add my
new knowledge to the REVIEW html pages. I intend to make new pages 
specifically on the Forth, and Scheme language since they seems to be the
chosen one up to date. I should also read the mailing-list and add DIGEST
of what I will have read. Moreover I will aim at finding a new language
that would be so good that we could use it without modification, if such
a thing exist. My native language is not english, but french. I hope it 
is not too obvious.

Have we still writing access to the ftp://bespin.pacificrim.net/tunes/ ?
Some place I've read that we don't have access to a ftp site anymore, and
at one place I read that we have access to this site. It seems out-dated
however.

I would suggest making clear on the main page of Tunes that all the
web pages can be downloaded from the last doc file, since it took me
a while to discover this.

-Paul Dufresne







  

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