retroforth/doc/book/tech-notes/kernel-words

## On The Kernel Wordset

In implementing the RETRO 12 kernel (called RETRO Core, and
defined in `image/retro.muri`) I had to decide on what functionality
would be needed. It was important to me that this be kept clean
and minimalistic, as I didn't want to spend a lot of time
changing it as time progressed. It's far nicer to code at the
higher level, where the RETRO language is fully functional, as
opposed to writing more assembly code.

So what made it in?

Primitives

These are words that map directly to Nga instructions.

    dup      drop     swap   call   eq?   -eq?   lt?   gt?
    fetch    store    +      -      *     /mod   and   or
    xor      shift    push   pop    0;

Memory

    fetch-next    store-next    ,    s,

Strings

    s:to-number    s:eq?    s:length

Flow Control

    choose    if    -if    repeat    again

Compiler & Interpreter

    Compiler    Heap        ;       [    ]      Dictionary
    d:link      d:class     d:xt    d:name      d:add-header
    class:word  class:primitive     class:data  class:macro
    sigil::     sigil:#     sigil:& sigil:$
    interpret   d:lookup    err:notfound

Assembler

    i           d           r

I *could* slightly reduce this. The $ sigil could be defined in
higher level code, and I don't strictly *need* to expose the
`fetch-next` and `store-next` here. But since the are already
implemented as dependencies of the words in the kernel, it would
be a bit wasteful to redefine them later in higher level code.

A recent change was the addition of the assembler into the
kernel. This allows the higher levels to use assembly as needed,
which gives more flexibility and allows for more optimal code
in the standard library.

With these words the rest of the language can be built up. Note
that the RETRO kernel does not provide any I/O words. It's assumed
that the RETRO interfaces will add these as best suited for the
systems they run on.

There is another small bit. All images start with a few key
pointers in fixed offsets of memory. These are:

    | Offset | Contains                    |
    | ------ | --------------------------- |
    | 0      | lit call nop nop            |
    | 1      | Pointer to main entry point |
    | 2      | Dictionary                  |
    | 3      | Heap                        |
    | 4      | RETRO version identifier    |

An interface can use the dictionary pointer and knowledge of the
dictionary format for a specific RETRO version to identify the
location of essential words like `interpret` and `err:notfound`
when implementing the user facing interface.