Re: SwiftForth Survey

I'm probably not the typical SwiftForth user. I mostly use SwiftForth as the platform to build interactive cross-compilers. As such, I really don't care much about the GUI aspects. For this purpose, a command-line interface is all that's needed. But here goes...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sftalk-bounce_at_forth.com [mailto:sftalk-bounce_at_forth.com] On Behalf Of Rick VanNorman
> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 1:48 PM
> To: sftalk_at_forth.com
> Subject: [sftalk] SwiftForth Survey
>
> Hi Group--
>
> Please help us determine the next set of features and updates to
> Swiftforth by answering the following questions:
>
> 1. Do you use the current multi-tasking model in SwiftForth? This
> is the "old" model multi-tasker, with PAUSE and CONSTRUCT
> and ACTIVATE.

No.

> 2. Do you use the MEMORY browser window?

No.

> 3. Do you use BROWSER to examine wordlists?

No.

> 4. Do you use any of the auxillary color mappings in COLORS.F?

Yes.

> 5. Do you use the BOLD and BRIGHT colors in COLORS.F?

Yes, a lot. (Although the choice of one or the other seems a bit arbitrary sometimes...)

> 6. Please relate the 4 things you like the best about SwiftForth.

Features of the implementation or just things in general?

Features:

1) WH (the cross-reference)
2) LOCATE
3) WORDS <filter> (this is an amazing tool)
4) Ease of importing DLL (Windows) and DL (Linux) functions

I can't imagine working in a programming environment that did not have those first three tools.

Things in general:

1) It's fast
2) It's pretty well documented
3) Making little turnkey apps is easy
4) Remembers my configuration, lets me use my new favorite editor of the week seamlessly

> 7. Please relate the 4 things you dislike the most about SwiftForth.

1) I find SWOOP extremely complicated and difficult to understand, so I don't use it.
2) I don't like the debug window being a separate DLL.
3) I don't like a lot of the GUI tools just for the sake of being a GUI (like that thing that "watches" memory)
4) I wish some of the more opaque system-level code had better comments (I add them when I can, but a lot of that was written long ago)

> 8. What features would you like to see?

Can't think of any. SwiftForth serves my needs pretty well.

> 9. What features exist, but don't do what you need or expect?

The debug window DLL is a little squirrely sometimes and behaves in unpredictable ways. Logging debug window output to a file doesn't always seem to do what I expect.

--Leon

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Received on Mon Apr 21 2008 - 22:39:12 PDT