Welcome to qartus, an interpreter for Forth-79. qartus is a complete console environment adhering to the Forth-79 Standard, with some additions, two editors (a line-editor and a screen-editor), a complete library and documentation.
(from the manual) "Why Forth? Maybe because I like programming, and I like Forth and I like the idea to create something by building small pieces of it. But principally because Forth is the most fascinating imperative language ever created, in my opinion. That's qartus."
"Why Forth-79? Because it's the First Standardization of the Forth language. Because it's simple. Because the first Forth version I studied was Forth-79. That's qartus 79."
"I don't belong to any Forth circle, no Forth group, no Forth organization; no university, no school, no structure. And I'm not a professional programmer, so please don't tell me 'you should have done this that way, and that this way!' because I know that my programming style is pretty naive. I just want my algorithms to work: speeding them up and making them beautiful are tasks that go beyond my interests."
Documentation
Available documentation (which is contained into the downloadable package and is linked here for your convenience):
The
qartus manual for current version in
pdf format.
The
qartus executable, before use, must be compiled, installed and configured. I suggest the following very easy procedure in few steps (use the terminal):
1) Copy the package somewhere, and unpack it; it will unpack into a directory named, say, qartus.XXX.src (where 'XXX' is a string specifying the program version);
2) Get into qartus source directory, open the file custom.h and change what you think must be changed. The file has auto-explicative comments;
3) Then type the following (be sure to have
gcc installed):
$ make $ make install
The install may require root privileges if you try to install
qartus into system directories, as suggested by default in the Makefile. If you have administrative access, but you type from your own login, type
$ sudo make install
4) Then you can type the following to set up the environment
$ qartus --config
The --config installation (not mandatory) creates the hidden folder /.qartus/ in your $HOME directory and the folder ~/.qartus/blocks/; then all installation block files are copied therein. Installation blocks are named with the reserved number range 20000-29999; all other numbers are at your disposition. If you want to alter reserved number range blocks, remember to rename them with another number, because one next version can overwrite all installation blocks.
5) now type the following
$ qartus --version
to see the version number, or better
$ qartus --help
to see all basic options of
qartus. Here it is! qartus is installed and can be run! Remember also to read the manual, to know the internal secrets of qartus!
Download qartus
Version 1.0.alpha (January 02, 2020)
I here thank Ian Jones, the man who shared with me this creation. He discovered many bugs, suggested many things, cleared many concepts, tested everything, showing a great patience throughout the whole process and supporting my discouragements. He discovered a huge number of bugs, and helped me to interpret some features of the Forth-79 Standard. He's a friend, even if we've never met: all of our work was shared through emails, messages and Whatsapp, but our friendship is anyway strong. Thank you, Ian. And I also thank Bruce Axtens, who compiled the Window version. Without their help, this project would be worse.
You can download qartus Alpha sources
here.
I wait for your impressions and bugs. Send
me your suggestions, your considerations, your corrections; even send me your working Forth-79 programs for qartus, all commented and completed with your own name and your data: these programs will be part of the next package, if you please.