Well, version 1.0 of the republication effort on Thinking Forth has come
to fruition!

Version 1.0 is the effort to recreate the original book just as you
remember it. All the illustrations, text, etc. were typeset in the open
"LaTeX" format through a collaborative development effort on Sourceforge.

You can order the book at
http://tinyurl.com/4j52r

You can download an electronic copy at
http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net

On behalf of myself and the team, I'd like to thank everyone involved in
the project -- please read the Acknowledgements section for
contributions made by each person.

John R. Hogerhuis
Bernd Paysan
Andrew Nicholson
Anton Ertl
Nils Holm
Joseph Knapka
Josef Gabriel
Ed Beroset
Albert van der Horst
Steve Fisher

Particular thanks go to Bernd Paysan who got us set up on SourceForge
and for doing the heavy lifting wherever and whenever necessary.

Also thanks go to Leo Brodie for generously allowing us to provide a
free PDF version. Proceeds from the printed version go to the author,
and I hope Leo makes great bags of money. In fact, if you like to see
classic out-of-print books brought back to print in this way, I believe
that the best way to make that happen is to buy printed copies, as that
will show other authors that free online versions help sell hardcopies.
Also, please consider sending customer reviews/feedback to Amazon, and
if someone out there is a good writer, please send a book review to
Slashdot.

On licenses: you can share copies of the PDF with your friends, but keep
in mind the particular Creative Commons license chosen does not permit
commercial uses without the author's permission, which I take to mean
selling copies without a license, or bundling it with something else you
are selling. A readable version of the license and a link to the actual
license is in the front of the book--please read it. If you need more
freedom than the non-commercial license allows, you are of course free
to discuss taking a license with Leo Brodie. Also, if you create a
derivative work of TF, please understand you must release your work
under the same terms.

Now that the entire book is available in editable format, future
editions will be much easier to produce, and volunteers for future
efforts are welcome any time. Check out the SourceForge project home
page for more details on how to get involved with that.

Enjoy!

-- John.

From:	Julian V. Noble
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:48:26 -0500

"John R. Hogerhuis" wrote:
>
> Well, version 1.0 of the republication effort on Thinking Forth has come
> to fruition!
>
> Version 1.0 is the effort to recreate the original book just as you
> remember it. All the illustrations, text, etc. were typeset in the open
> "LaTeX" format through a collaborative development effort on Sourceforge.
>
> You can order the book at
> http://tinyurl.com/4j52r
>
> You can download an electronic copy at
> http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net
>
> On behalf of myself and the team, I'd like to thank everyone involved in
> the project -- please read the Acknowledgements section for
> contributions made by each person.
>
> John R. Hogerhuis
> Bernd Paysan
> Andrew Nicholson
> Anton Ertl
> Nils Holm
> Joseph Knapka
> Josef Gabriel
> Ed Beroset
> Albert van der Horst
> Steve Fisher
>
> Particular thanks go to Bernd Paysan who got us set up on SourceForge
> and for doing the heavy lifting wherever and whenever necessary.
>
> Also thanks go to Leo Brodie for generously allowing us to provide a
> free PDF version. Proceeds from the printed version go to the author,
> and I hope Leo makes great bags of money. In fact, if you like to see
> classic out-of-print books brought back to print in this way, I believe
> that the best way to make that happen is to buy printed copies, as that
> will show other authors that free online versions help sell hardcopies.
> Also, please consider sending customer reviews/feedback to Amazon, and
> if someone out there is a good writer, please send a book review to
> Slashdot.
>
> On licenses: you can share copies of the PDF with your friends, but keep
> in mind the particular Creative Commons license chosen does not permit
> commercial uses without the author's permission, which I take to mean
> selling copies without a license, or bundling it with something else you
> are selling. A readable version of the license and a link to the actual
> license is in the front of the book--please read it. If you need more
> freedom than the non-commercial license allows, you are of course free
> to discuss taking a license with Leo Brodie. Also, if you create a
> derivative work of TF, please understand you must release your work
> under the same terms.
>
> Now that the entire book is available in editable format, future
> editions will be much easier to produce, and volunteers for future
> efforts are welcome any time. Check out the SourceForge project home
> page for more details on how to get involved with that.
>
> Enjoy!
>
> -- John.

I haven't been able to get the colored on-screen PDF from SourceForge. Looks
like a link is broken somewhere or something like that.

--
Julian V. Noble
Professor Emeritus of Physics
jvn@lessspamformother.virginia.edu
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/~jvn/

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious
day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last
and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

--- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

From:	John R. Hogerhuis
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:45:27 -0800

Julian V. Noble wrote:
>
>
> I haven't been able to get the colored on-screen PDF from SourceForge. Looks
> like a link is broken somewhere or something like that.
>

I just tried it, and it timed out once and took a long time the second
time, but it does work as I just downloaded a copy. SF must be having
some problems, but the link is right.

-- John.

From:	Luke McCarthy
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:07:50 +0000

Brilliant!

Will it be available on Amazon UK? There is a page for it, but it says
it is not in stock.

Luke

From:	John R. Hogerhuis
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:47:30 -0800

Luke McCarthy wrote:

> Will it be available on Amazon UK? There is a page for it, but it says
> it is not in stock.

Hi Luke,

Well, I'm not exactly sure how it works. This is a "Print On Demand"
sort of thing, so I doubt Amazon actually keeps the books in stock. My
guess is that you would need to go through the US site and have it
shipped internationally, as that is how Bernd (he's in Germany) had to
order his. Perhaps you could collude with others to order in quantity to
save on shipping.

You (and anyone else from UK) might inquire with Amazon UK and see
whether they would stock some copies. It would probably mean more coming
from customers than anyone else.

-- John.

From:	Anton Ertl
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 08:36:40 GMT

"John R. Hogerhuis" writes:
>Well, I'm not exactly sure how it works. This is a "Print On Demand"
>sort of thing, so I doubt Amazon actually keeps the books in stock. My
>guess is that you would need to go through the US site and have it
>shipped internationally, as that is how Bernd (he's in Germany) had to
>order his.

According to you can
preorder it from bookzilla.de:

http://www.bookzilla.de/shop/action/productDetails?aUrl=90006951&artiId=3149667

The delivery date is unknown, though.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
New standard: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/ansforth/forth200x.html

From:	Bernd Paysan
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:59:29 +0100

Anton Ertl wrote:

> "John R. Hogerhuis" writes:
>>Well, I'm not exactly sure how it works. This is a "Print On Demand"
>>sort of thing, so I doubt Amazon actually keeps the books in stock. My
>>guess is that you would need to go through the US site and have it
>>shipped internationally, as that is how Bernd (he's in Germany) had to
>>order his.
>
> According to you can
> preorder it from bookzilla.de:
>
>
http://www.bookzilla.de/shop/action/productDetails?aUrl=90006951&artiId=3149667
>
> The delivery date is unknown, though.

Don't worry about the delivery date - that's unknown in any case ;-). The
bookzilla commission goes to FSF, but ATM, Amazon has a 34% discount, so
Amazon is cheaper (I pay in Dollar what bookzilla wants in Euro).

Amazon puts books into stock depending on demand. So if there's enough
demand, they will put it into stock.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/

From:	dhoffman at talkamerica.net
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	20 Jan 2005 02:14:55 -0800

Outstanding! Nicely done. Congratulations to all involved.

Bernd, I like the way you handled the object recant. The footnote is
well done. Minor nitpick: When I read "Think of something like
Windows COM "objects" or CORBA." I am puzzled because I have
absolutely no idea what these are. I know, I can look them up on the
internet (which I will do). Anyway, I think the idea that you wanted
to get across there is a bit lost. But that's just a nitpick. Again,
to you and the rest I say, "Nice work!".

Regards,

-Doug

From:	Bernd Paysan
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:28:15 +0100

dhoffman@talkamerica.net wrote:

> Outstanding! Nicely done. Congratulations to all involved.
>
> Bernd, I like the way you handled the object recant. The footnote is
> well done. Minor nitpick: When I read "Think of something like
> Windows COM "objects" or CORBA." I am puzzled because I have
> absolutely no idea what these are. I know, I can look them up on the
> internet (which I will do). Anyway, I think the idea that you wanted
> to get across there is a bit lost. But that's just a nitpick. Again,
> to you and the rest I say, "Nice work!".

Any comment is highly appreciated. COM and CORBA are binary "objects" that
rely on heavy inter-process communication (CORBA and the .NET framework
even network-transparent inter-process communication). I know this stuff
needs deeper discussion, but this footnote was too small to write it all
down.

Most of the discussion about this topic happend after 1984, and therefore,
only a really updated book can cover that in the necessary details (think
of the Design Pattern wave, or the shrinkwrap software - "Buy, Don't
Build", from Brooks in "No Silver Bullet" - and the free software wave,
with "The Cathedral and the Bazar" from Eric S. Raymond, which happend even
later, and offers a compromise between ready-to-use software, and
open-to-be-modified parts).

This is not the end of the project, this is where it really starts. The work
left over is to

* Modify the example sources so that they run with ANS Forth systems.

* Update coding style to current practice (lower case and such).

* Add chapters about Forth and OOP, Forth debugging, and maintenance.

* Interview Forth thinkers that didn't have a chance 20 years ago.

* Translate it to other (natural! ;-) languages.

I'll start with the first two points soon - I'll write a "rightcase" tool
first, which will adopt Gforth's case style, and run the code sections
through that. Then the code itself needs to be updated, thinks like CELL+
and CHAR/[CHAR] x instead of ASCII x. The biggest point seems to be
DOER/MAKE, which is not possible in ANS Forth (due to return stack issues).
DEFER/IS are far more common, anyway. Also, the code should be run through
a test harness, to make sure that there's no bug.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/

From:	John R. Hogerhuis
Subject:	Re: Thinking Forth 1.0 released!
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:07:01 -0800

Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> * Modify the example sources so that they run with ANS Forth systems.
>
> * Update coding style to current practice (lower case and such).
>
> * Add chapters about Forth and OOP, Forth debugging, and maintenance.
>
> * Interview Forth thinkers that didn't have a chance 20 years ago.
>
> * Translate it to other (natural! ;-) languages.
>

I'd add that if someone is knowledgeable and motivated, that it would be
nice to see some additional target document formats added to the build,
for example

Text
RTF
HTML
SGML
Plucker
PalmDoc

Yes there are automated utilities to do this sort of thing, but to get
it really readable would take careful tweaking especially for very small
format screens like PDAs

-- John.