retroforth/README

## Retro: A Modern, Pragmatic Forth

RETRO is a modern, pragmatic Forth drawing influences from many
sources. It's clean, elegant, tiny, and easy to grasp and adapt
to various uses.

Features:

- Open Source (ISC License)
- Portable (runs on a MISC-style virtual machine)
- Small source & binaries
- Builds into a single, self contained binary for easy deployment
- Sources in literate format, using a Markdown variant

## Quick Start

For most systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, Linux):

    make

You will need a standard C compiler and `make`.

## Executables

Binaries will be placed in the `bin` directory.

The primary executable is `retro`. This is used for running the
examples and the Atua (gopher) & Casket (http) servers that
power forthworks.com.

The `retro` executable embeds the image into the binary, making
it trivial to copy and deploy.

This interface layer also extends the language with many new
words and vocabularies, adds scripting, file i/o, gopher, and
floating point math support.

The `retro` executable can handle a variety of command line
arguments:

    retro -i

Starts the *listener*, a basic REPL for interactive use.

    retro filename

This will run the code in the specified file, then exit. This
is also used to run programs as shell-type scripts using a
header line like `#!/usr/bin/env retro`.

    retro -i -f filename

This will run the code in the specified file, then start the
listener.

    retro -h

Displays a summary of the command line arguments.

Source files for use with `retro` are written with code in
fenced blocks:

    commentary here
     
    ~~~
    code here
    ~~~

Anything outside the fenced blocks will be ignored.

## Documentation

The primary documentation is in RETRO-Book.md (and the formatted
RETRO-Book.html.) Additional notes can be found in the `doc`
directory.

## Alternative Implementations

In addition to the C and Python implementations, this source
tree includes additional implementations in C#, JavaScript,
and Pascal. These are not as well tested or as feature complete
as the main implementations, but are provided for your use if
the standard implementations will not suffice.

## Patreon

I have a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/_crc for those that
want to financially support development. All funds raised via
Pateron are put into development related expenses (server expenses,
app store fees, hardware).

Thanks go out to my current and past patrons:

- Kiyoshi YONEDA
- Krinkleneck
- Rick Carlino
- Scott McCallum