80 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
|
# Retro 11 (2011 - 2019): A Look Back
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So it's now been about five years since the last release of
|
||
|
|
Retro 11. While I still see some people obtaining and using it,
|
||
|
|
I've moved on to the twelth generation of Retro. It's time for
|
||
|
|
me to finally retire Retro 11.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
As I prepare to do so, I thought I'd take a brief look back.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Retro 11 began life in 2011. It grew out of Retro 10, which
|
||
|
|
was the first version of Retro to not be written in x86 assembly
|
||
|
|
language. For R10 and R11, I wrote a portable virtual machine
|
||
|
|
(with numerous implementations) and the Forth dialect was kept
|
||
|
|
in an image file which ran on the VM.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Retro 10 worked, but was always a bit too sloppy and changed
|
||
|
|
drastically between releases. The major goal of Retro 11 was
|
||
|
|
to provide a stable base for a five year period. In retrospect,
|
||
|
|
this was mostly achieved. Code from earlier releases normally
|
||
|
|
needed only minor adjustments to run on later releases, though
|
||
|
|
newer releases added significantly to the language.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
There were seven releases.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.0: 2011, July
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.1: 2011, November
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.2: 2012, January
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.3: 2012, March
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.4: 2012, July
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.5: 2013, March
|
||
|
|
- Release 11.6: 2014, August
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Development was fast until 11.4. This was the point at which
|
||
|
|
I had to slow down due to RSI problems. It was also the point
|
||
|
|
which I started experiencing some problems with the metacompiler
|
||
|
|
(as discussed previously).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Retro 11 was flexible. All colon definitions were setup as hooks,
|
||
|
|
allowing new functionality to be layered in easily. This allowed
|
||
|
|
the later releases to add things like vocabularies, search order,
|
||
|
|
tab completion, and keyboard remapping. This all came at a cost
|
||
|
|
though: later things could use the hooks to alter behavior of
|
||
|
|
existing words, so it was necessary to use a lot of caution to
|
||
|
|
ensure that the layers didn't break the earlier code.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The biggest issue was the I/O model. Retro 11 and the Ngaro VM
|
||
|
|
assumed the existence of a console environment. All input was
|
||
|
|
required to be input at the keyboard, and all output was to be
|
||
|
|
shown on screen. This caused some problems. Including code from
|
||
|
|
a file required some tricks, temporarily rewriting the keyboard
|
||
|
|
input function to read from the file. It also became a major
|
||
|
|
issue when I wrote the iOS version. The need to simulate the
|
||
|
|
keyboard and console complicated everything and I had to spend
|
||
|
|
a considerable amount of effort to deal with battery performance
|
||
|
|
resulting from the I/O polling and wait states.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
But on the whole it worked well. I used Retro 11.6 until I
|
||
|
|
started work on Retro 12 in late 2016, and continued running
|
||
|
|
some tools written in R11 until the first quarter of last year.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The final image file was 23,137 cells (92,548 bytes). This was
|
||
|
|
bloated by keeping some documentation (stack comments and short
|
||
|
|
descriptions) in the image, which started in 11.4. This contained
|
||
|
|
269 words.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I used Retro 11 for a wide variety of tasks. A small selection
|
||
|
|
of things that were written includes:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
- a pastebin
|
||
|
|
- front end to ii (irc client)
|
||
|
|
- small explorations of interactive fiction
|
||
|
|
- irc log viewer
|
||
|
|
- tool to create html from templates
|
||
|
|
- tool to automate creation of an SVCD from a set of photos
|
||
|
|
- tools to generate reports from data sets for my employer
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In the end, I'm happy with how Retro 11 turned out. I made some
|
||
|
|
mistakes in embracing too much complexity, but despite this it
|
||
|
|
was a successful system for many years.
|