72 lines
3.2 KiB
Text
72 lines
3.2 KiB
Text
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# Forth Scientific Library
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This is a (partial) port of the Forth Scientific Library to RETRO.
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It doesn't provide everything at this point, and may not in the
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future. I am slowly porting the files as time allows, but this is
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not a high priority project for me.
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The original files can be found at: https://www.taygeta.com/fsl/scilib.html
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I claim no copyright on the ported code; see the individual files
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for copyright and license conditions.
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## Introduction
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The Forth Scientific Library was created by Skip Carter with the
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help of volunteer contributers and reviewers of code. It provides
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a collection of routines that may be useful to those doing
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scientific or numerically intensive work using Forth. Below is
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Skip's original announcement and proposal for the Project.
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Currently the Project's activities are being coordinated by
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Charles Montgomery, who would welcome comments, suggestions, code
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contributions, or whatever, at cgm@physics.utoledo.edu
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## Skip's Original Introduction
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The Forth language is at an important cross-road with regard to
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its use as a general scientific programming language. The new
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FORTRAN-90 is just becoming available and long time FORTRAN
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programmers are finding it different enough that many are
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wondering if they might as well learn a new language instead of
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sticking with FORTRAN. If the Forth community plays its hand
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right, that alternate language could be Forth. To do so Forth
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needs to overcome the standard complaints of the FORTRAN
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community:
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(1) Its not standardized, so how can I port my software ?
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(2) I have lots of pre-existing FORTRAN code that works perfectly
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well and I am not in any hurry to re-write it. Can Forth
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interface with my FORTRAN code ?
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(3) There are no scientific libraries in Forth.
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The recently adopted ANS Forth handily addresses #1, and in fact
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it is the adoption of the standard that makes issues #2 and #3
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worth addressing.
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With regard to #2, I think the adoption of the standard will help
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here, since the interface to other software is the kind of feature
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that will distinguish one vendors ANS Forth from anothers. While
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the standard does not address such interfaces, I don't think that
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there will be too much divergence on how this is done. The Unix
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world has no such standard, and I have only encountered 2 different
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C-FORTRAN conventions in over 15 years of using Unix.
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So #1 is now solved, and the vendors will (I hope!) address #2. The
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third point can be addressed by the Forth community itself. Several
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potential scientific users of Forth discussed these issues at the
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1994 Rochester Forth Conference. It was decided that we should
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undertake the project of writing a scientific library in ANS Forth.
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The plan is to write a set of Forth words to implement such libraries
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as the ACM libraries, BLAS, LINPACK, etc. The libraries will be
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publicly available in source form (in some sort of "public" release:
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public domain, copyleft, copyrighted but freely distributable, etc).
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....
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Everett (Skip) Carter Phone: 831-641-0645 FAX: 831-641-0647
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Taygeta Scientific Inc. INTERNET: skip@taygeta.com
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1340 Munras Ave., Suite 314 UUCP: ...!uunet!taygeta!skip
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Monterey, CA. 93940 WWW: http://www.taygeta.com/skip.html
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