VolksForth Readme
Version 1.0
10. August 2005 (cas)
VolksForth is a 16bit Forth System produced by the german Forth Gesellschaft
e.V. Main development of this system was done between 1985 until 1989. The
VolksForth Project was revived in 2005 with the goal to produce a managable
Forthsystem for computer systems with restricted system resources.
Some modern Forth Systems were influenced by or were derived from VolksForth
(GNU-Forth, bigForth).
The current Version of VolskForth is 3.81. Work on Version 3.90 has started.
At this time VolksForth is available for this Systems:
VolksForth MS-DOS (Intel x86 Architecture i8086-ia64)
VolksForth 6502 (Commodore 64, Commodore Plus 4)
VolksForth Z80 (CP/M, Schneider CPC)
VolksForth 68000 (Atari ST)
Copyright
The VolksForth Sources are made available under the terms of the
BSD Lizenz - http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
The Handbook is Copyright (c) 1985 - 2005 Forth Gesellschaft
e.V. ( Klaus Schleisiek, Ulrich Hoffmann, Bernd Pennemann, Georg Rehfeld
and Dietrich Weineck).
The Handbook, binary Files and Sourcecode for VolksForth as well as Information
about Forth Gesellschaft are available on the Forth Gesellschaft Webserver at
http://www.forth-ev.de/
(most of the Information is still in german. We are planning to provide future
versions with englisch documentation)
Information and Help about the Programming Language Forth can be found in the
Internet, starting with the Website of the Forthgesellschaft, or in the Usenet Forum
de.comp.lang.forth (via Google Groups: http://groups.google.de/group/de.comp.lang.forth )
Details on VolksForth 68000 (Atari ST)
* Requirements
Atari ST with at least 520 KB RAM, Floppy or Harddisk
* Files
This is list of VolksForth Files in this Distribution. Shadowscreens
with additional Information are marked with (*).
ASSEMBLE.SCR the volksFORTH-83 Assembler.
RELOCATE.SCR * Relocator to adapt the System to use more or less
Diskbuffers and therefor more or less memory for the
Forth Dictionary
ALLOCATE.SCR * contains OS-Libraryroutines to allocate and free
memory
DIVERSES.SCR * small, often used definitions
FORTHKER.PRG contains the Forth-Kernel including the Fileinterface.
EDIICON.SCR Definitions for the Editor-Resource; created with the
Resource Construction Set
EDITOR.SCR * the GEM-Editor.
EDWINDOW.SCR * the window for the editor
STRINGS.SCR * Basic String-Operations
STARTUP.SCR Loadscreen to create a work-system
TOOLS.SCR Decompiler and Tracer.
INDEX.SCR * Definition of the Word "INDEX".
PRINTER.SCR * Printer-Interface.
FORTH_83.SCR Sourcecode of the VolksForth 3.81
DISASS.SCR the Disassembler.
FILEINT.SCR * the File-Interface.
LINE_A.SCR * the Basic Words for Line_A Graphic.
DEMO.SCR Graphic-Demos with Line_A Graphic.
TASKER.SCR the Multitasker.
RAMDISK.SCR * With this RAM-Disk free RAM outside the Forth System
can be used for Diskbuffers
TUTORIAL.SCR A short Tutorial for the Editor
ERRORBOX.SCR * reroutes Errormessages into Alter-Boxes. Example for
the use of Alert Boxes from Forth
Subdirectory GEM
BASICS.SCR Basic Words, Definition of Arrays etc.
VDI.SCR the VDI-Library.
AES.SCR the AES-Library.
GEMDEFS.SCR Definitions for Windows Parameters and Labels
SUPERGEM.SCR * useful words to ease the use of GEM
* Installation
Copy the Diskimages to Atari Disks (360KB) or copy the files from the "Harddisk"
directory to harddisk or on Disks. Start the Program File "4th.prg" from TOS.
* Emulator
VolksForth Atari ST 3.81 has been tested in the Atari ST Emulator "HATARI"
(hatari.sourceforge.net) with EmuTos (emutos.sourceforge.net). VolksForth 3.81 has
some display problems with screen resolutions above 640x480. We try to solve this in
later versions.
The Forth Live-Linux CD-ROM (available in the Downloadsection of the Forth
Gesellschaft Website) includes the current Versions of VolksForth direct usable
without Installation including the Handbooks as PDF-Files.
Have fun with VolksForth
the VolksForth Team
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