ColorForth

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The correct title of this article is colorForth. It appears incorrectly here due to technical restrictions.

colorForth is the current state-of-the-art from the Forth programming language's original designer, Chuck Moore.

A very idiosyncratic programming environment, the colors simplify Forth's semantics, speed compilation, and are said to aid Chuck's own poor eyesight: colorForth uses different colors in its source code (replacing some of the punctuation in Forth) to determine how different words are treated.

colorForth was originally developed as the scripting language for Chuck's own homebrew VLSI CAD program OKAD, with which he develops custom Forth processors. As the language gained utility, he rewrote his CAD program in it, spruced up the environment, and released it to the public. It has since gained a small following, spurred much debate in the Forth community, and sprung offshoots for other processors and operating environments. The language's roots are closer to the Forth machine languages Chuck develops for his processors than to the mainstream standardized Forths in more widespread use.

The language comes with its own tiny (63K) operating system. Practically everything is stored as source code and compiled as and when required. The current colorForth environment is limited to running on Pentium based PC's with limited support for lowest-common-denominator motherboards, AGP video, disk, and network hardware.

The coloring of the name "colorForth" is not gratuitous. It is how the author spells the language on his web pages, and serves as a short usage example. Red words start a definition and green words are compiled into the current definition. Thus, colorForth would be rendered in standard Forth as: