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F-PC USER'S MANUAL


F-PC Version 3.5, November 1989




F-PC is a public domain Forth system optimized for IBM-PC/XT/AT type of
computers under MS-DOS operating system.  It is supplied on a set of four
diskettes with all the source code and documentation.  Files are all
compressed in the .ARC format.  The diskettes are not copy-protected and
the users are free to make backup copies and give copies to others.  The
only exception is that Dr. Robert L. Smith reserved the copyright on his
software floating point package contained in the files SFLOAT.SEQ,
SFLOAT1.SEQ, SFLOAT2.SEQ, and SFLOAT3.SEQ.  This package is made
available for unlimited personal, non-commercial use.  If you want to
include the whole or part of this package in your product for sell at a
profit, you should obtain a license from Robert Smith.

This Manual is also in the public domain and the copyright is forfeited.
You are free to copy it and distribute it with the F-PC diskettes.
However, the companying F-PC Technical Reference Manual is copyrighted by
Dr. C. H. Ting.

As F-PC is produced on volunteer efforts and donated to the public
domain, the authors and the F- PC Working Group declined to bear
responsibility for any special, consequential or other damages on using
F-PC system for any application, although every possible effort was made
to ensure its integrity for correct operation.

Authentic copies of F-PC diskettes, F-PC Technical Reference Manual and
this F-PC User's Manual can be obtained from Offete Enterprises, Inc.
The diskette set is $25.00, the Technical Reference Manual is $30.00, and
this Manual is $20.00 plus handling and sales tax.

There are two versions of F-PC in circulation.  Version 2.25 was released
in November 1988.  All files were in the .ARC format.  Version 3.5 is
released in November 1989 and files are in the .ZIP format.







Offete Enterprises, Inc.
1306 South B Street
San Mateo, CA 94402
Tel. [phone]

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION



F-PC has been circulated in the Forth community for more than a year now.
The user response is very positive as people need good tools to do
productive work in the MS-DOS and IBM- PC/XT/AT environments.  Text files
are used almost universally.  F-PC fills these needs very nicely, with
its rather powerful SED text editor, the capability to access all 640K
bytes of memory, and the smooth interface to MS-DOS and the hardware
underneath.  We have also seem very large applications built upon F-PC,
free from the 64K byte limitation.

Although many people had made substantial contributions to F-PC, it is
still a product of a single person, Tom Zimmer.  Tom is very prolific in
producing code.  The most interesting thing about him is that he has a
very fluid and open mind about programming, and very receptive to other
peoples ideas and techniques.  People ask him questions on the phone,
complaining about some inadequacies in F-PC, and sending him programs and
applications.  He would say: "Hmmm. That's very interesting.  Let me
think about it."  The next day he would have some new features added to
F-PC, and the version number was automatically incremented.

This is the mindset which allows F-PC to grow and to include many
utilities useful for Forth programmer in their daily programming
activity.  An old Chinese proverb says:

The ocean is big because it does not refuse water from small streams;
Mount Tai is tall because it does not reject dirt and small pebbles.

F-PC thus becomes a great reservoir of tools and utilities that each of
us can use to build applications and to further our understanding of
Forth.

On the other had, it is very difficult to document a changing system and
make the system useful for people near and far.  It was a Herculean
struggle to hold down F-PC's version auto-incrementer. After I finished
the User's Manual and the Technical Reference Manual for Version 2.21, I
was confronted by Version 2.25.  Under great pressure, I agreed to update
the documents to 2.25, but under one condition:  I would keep the 2.21
documents in ready reserve.  In case 2.25 got changed again, I would go
back and supply 2.21 documentation only.  For this reason, I had used
F-PC 2.21 on all my computers, even after I started distribution F-PC
2.25 and its documentation to other people.

In the late spring, 1989, Tom was ready to revise F-PC again, although
our understanding was that no update would be considered before the
August.  However, there were a few serious bugs which needed to be fixed,
and many new features Tom just could not wait to install.  In the end, we
reached the compromise that F-PC was upgraded to Version 2.2501, with 01
in lower case, with only the bug-fixes.  As for the new features, Tom
could do whatever he saw fit and distributed to whoever wanted it, but
not under the name F-PC.  With that, Tom marched right off, changed the
name to F-TZ, and turned on the version auto-incrementer.

There were many significant improvements in F-TZ, like the browser which
allows the user to browse source and help files inside the editor, the
hypetext on-line documentation system, the new system installation
procedure, better help files on the kernel, improved mouse support, and
other minor enhancements.  In September, 1989, the F-PC Working Group was
reconvened in the Silicon Valley FIG Chapter to consider upgrading F-PC.
The Group accepted F-TZ as the new version of F-PC, and I got the job to
upgrade the documentation.

October 1989 C. H. Ting

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION:

 A TRADITION OF PUBLIC DOMAIN FORTH



Forth was invented by Charles Moore in the 1960's as he developed
specialized tools for various applications.  It was formalized into a
programming language for telescope automation while Mr. Moore was with
the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.  As this work was supported by
public funds, Forth was born as a public domain software package which
followed telescopes to many different countries.  In 1972 Mr. Moore left
NRAO to form FORTH, Inc. in order to market Forth systems and services.
Implementations developed in FORTH, Inc. were proprietary and their usage
required license from FORTH, Inc.  However, a copy of Forth for PDP-11
was released to DECUS, the DEC Users Group, which became the only readily
available public domain Forth for many years.

Forth Interest Group was organized in 1978 to encourage the use of Forth
on small personal computers, which gradually became available for
individual users.  One major effort by Forth Interest Group was the
formation of Forth Implementation Team lead by Bill Ragsdale to build
figForth and put it in the public domain for general distribution.
Because figForth was implemented on many microprocessors based on a
single model and released with complete source listings, it became the de
facto standard of Forth on personal computers, eclipsing polyForth which
was by then the main product from FORTH, Inc.

The other major objective of Forth Interest Group was to establish a
standard definition of Forth as a programming language.  Forth Standards
Team was organized in 1978.  It took the Forth-77 Standard developed by
Forth users in Europe and produced Forth-78 Standard.  It was very
unsatisfactory and was almost immediately reworked into the Forth-79
Standard which was accepted by Forth Interest Group for promotion.
However, Forth Interest Group also decided that it would not publish
implementations and only encouraged Forth vendors to provided
implementations and support.  The only major public domain Forth
supporting Forth-79 Standard was MVP-Forth written by Glen Haydon and
distributed by Mountain View Press.

Forth Standard Team continued the refinement of Forth language and
published the Forth-83 Standard in 1983.  Again, Forth Interest Group
supported and promoted it, but did not provided any implementation.
Henry Laxen and Mike Perry felt that the Standard could not spread
without a faithful and useful implementation.  They implemented a
comprehensive model on 8080, 8086, and 68000 processors with fairly
uniform and transparent interfaces to the CP/M and MS-DOS operating
systems.  This public domain F83 model found wide acceptance, especially
among IBM PC users after it was listed in the PC-SIG catalog.

From 1983 to 1988, personal computers have made significant progress in
memory size and in disk space.  The traditional minimalist's approach in
the Forth operating system seems to be inadequate to stay abreast with
the tools and facilities embedded in the current personal computers. It
is necessary that Forth must communicate with the operating system in
standard file formats, and it has to address memory outside of the 64K
byte addressing space.  These capabilities were included in many 68000
Forth implementations, but not in the PC world due to the segmented
architecture and the handicapped operating system.  F-PC is a collective
effort to provide PC users a highly optimized version of public domain
Forth addressing these problems.  It allows the user a well integrated
environment to develop and maintain large applications utilizing the
memory and storage space generally available in a mid-range IBM PC/XT/AT
and its clones.  It is released to public domain with complete source,
following the spirit of figForth and F83, so that users will have the
freedom to tailor it to their specific applications and to build
commercial products from it.

F-PC is a greatly enhanced version of Forth derived from the F83 model
for the IBM-PC, XT, or AT developed by Tom Zimmer at Maxtor Corp.  A
major stepping stone between F-PC and F83 was the F83Y system produced by
Wil Baden, who adopted J. D. Hooper's separated heads and many other
features like interpreted conditionals, full featured decompiler, etc.
Many other people also contributed to it, including Robert L. Smith,
Charles Curley, and Jerry Modrow, but the major work was done by Tom
Zimmer.

In order to release this system for public usage, it is necessary to
provide better and more complete documentation on the system so that a
Forth programmer can pick it up and use the system productively on his
own, without having to have access to Tom Zimmer for support and
consultation.  A F-PC Working Group was organized to serve two very
specific purposes: to do beta testing on the system to flush out as many
bugs as possible, and to provide user and system documentation so that
both application and system Forth programmers can use the system in
isolated (in the Forth sense) geographic locations.

The F-PC Working Group was very loosely organized in the Silicon Valley
FIG (SVFIG) Chapter, during the chapter meeting at April 23, 1988.  Many
Chapter members participated and contributed to this effort.  The Chapter
also permitted the Working Group to use the morning FORML sessions in May
and June to discuss and work on F-PC.  Dr. C. H. Ting served as the focus
of this Group to coordinate the efforts in documentation.  Bug reports,
suggestions, and recommendation were collected and forwarded to Tom
Zimmer for consideration.

This Manual is part of the documentation to be made available with the
F-PC system.  It provides information on how to install F-PC, and the
most useful utilities for normal programming activity. It also assumes
that the user is familiar with Forth and DOS, and does not try to include
introduction materials.  As F-PC retains the look-and-feel of F83, prior
knowledge on F83 will be extremely helpful.  The background information
can be obtained from the following sources:

Starting Forth, Leo Brodie, Prentice Hall.
Programmer's Guide to the IBM-PC, Peter Norton, MicroSoft Press.
Inside F83, C. H. Ting, Offete Enterprises.

We hope that you will find F-PC valuable as you try to make the best use
of the resources in your PC or compatible computer.  We would also like
to know if you succeeded in using it to develop real and interesting
applications.  The User Contributions section of F-PC will always be open
to new submissions.  We hope that F-PC will provide a common format for
users to exchange code, ideas, and applications, the same way F83 has
been over the last five years.

F-PC has evolved over the last six months.  Tom Zimmer made substantial
modifications and enhancements to it.  However, due to the pressure
exerted on him by many users and members in this Working Group, Tom
reluctantly agreed to freeze F-PC at the current Version 2.25.  It will
not be modified until late next year so that users can start using it to
do applications.  Both the User's Manual and the Technical Reference
Manual were updated to this version.  Having accomplished its mission,
the F-PC Working Group ceases its existence.  However, technical
discussions on F- PC and a very extensive tutorial lead by Jack Brown
have appeared on the Forth Roundtable in the GEnie Network.  F-PC users
are encouraged to join the Forth Roundtable for information, assistance,
and possibly bug fixes.

Dr. C. H. Ting
Documentation Coordinator
F-PC Working Group
December, 1988
San Mateo, California

F-PC USERS MANUAL




CONTENTS


F-PC User's Manual                                                  i

Preface to the Third Edition                                        ii

Preface to the First Edition: A Tradition of Public Domain Forth    iii

1.   Introduction to F-PC                                           1
        1.   How did we get here?                                   1
        2.   F-PC, what is it all about                             3
        3.   Features in F-PC 2.25                                  4
        4.   New features in F-PC 3.5                               5

2.   Install F-PC                                                   6
        1.   The ZIP files                                          6
        2.   Install F-PC using INSTALL.EXE                         7
        3.   Install F-PC without using INSTALL.EXE                 8
        4.   Configure F-PC                                         9
        5.   Install F-PC on a dual floppy system                   10

3.   Hypertext Browser                                              12
        1.   Launch the hypertext browser                           12
        2.   Navigate F-PC with the browser                         13
        3.   A sample session                                       14
        4.   A short tutorial                                       15

4.   Programming Tools                                              18
        1.   DUMP                                                   18
        2.   The debugger                                           18
        3.   VALUES: Constants as variables                         20
        4.   Help words                                             20
        5.   Date and time                                          22
        6.   Comments                                               23
        7.   Screen control words in F-PC                           23
        8.   Compilation control words                              25
        9.   Printing source files in F-PC                          26
        10. Global search                                           26
        11. ALIAS                                                   27
        12. Browsing a large file                                   27
        13. The NEWZ editor                                         27
        14. The SZ editor                                           28

5.   SED, the Editor                                                30
        1.   Invoking SED editor                                    31
        2.   Using SED                                              32
        3.   Menu and mouse control                                 33
        4.   Function keys                                          34
        5.   Selecting another file to edit                         36
        6.   Search and replace                                     37
        7.   Cut, copy and paste                                    37
        8.   Line and word commands                                 38
        9.   Margin control                                         39
        10. Case conversion                                         39
        11. Line drawing                                            40
        12. Paragraph sorting                                       40
        13. Keystroke macros                                        40
        14. Print a file                                            41
        15. Other help                                              42

6.   Sequential Files                                               43
        1.   Sequential files in F-PC                               43
        2.   Handles                                                43
        3.   Sequential file word set                               45
        4.   Conversion between sequential file and block files     49
        5.   Programming style and sequential files                 50

7.   DOS Interface                                                  51
        1.   System interrupts and BIOS calls                       51
        2.   DOS service calls                                      52
        3.   The DOS shell                                          53
        4.   BATCH commands                                         54
        5.   DOS memory map of F-PC                                 54
        6.   Long memory word set                                   58
        7.   Memory allocation                                      59

8.   PASM, the F-PC Assembler                                       60
        1.   Prefix or postfix?                                     60
        2.   PASM glossary                                          61
        3.   Syntax comparison                                      63
        4.   Usage of 8086 machine registers in F-PC                63
        5.   Addressing modes                                       64
        6.   Assembly macros in PASM                                66
        7.   Local label                                            66
        8.   Inline code                                            67
        9.   Assembler style                                        69
        10. Debugging code words                                    70

IX.   Advanced Utilities                                            71
        1.   Rebuilding the system                                  71
        2.   Turnkey systems                                        72
        3.   Macros in F-PC and SED                                 72
        4.   F-PC preferences                                       72
        5.   Task chaining                                          74
        6.   Control structure enhancements                         75
        7.   Headless words                                         77
        8.   Save and restore                                       78
        9.   Line editor                                            79

10.   User Contributions                                            80
        1.   From Tom Zimmer                                        80
        2.   From Charles Curley                                    84
        3.   From Bob Smith                                         85
                HFLOAT/SFLOAT glossary                              87

Epilogue                                                            91
        How to Hang F-PC without a Long Rope                        91
        The kitchen sink                                            92
        An invitation                                               92
        Forth Interest Group local chapters                         93
        Forth on-line resources                                     96

Appendix A.     Glossary of the Forth Vocabulary                    A-1
        A1.   Introduction                                          A-1
        A2.   F-PC word glossary by category                        A-2
        A3.   F-PC alphabetic glossary                              A-12

Appendix B.     Samples and Tutorial Files                          B-1
        B1.   Memory allocation                                     B-1
        B2.   User boot process                                     B-2
        B3.   F-PC keystroke macros                                 B-3
        B4.   A sample menu file                                    B-6
        B5.   My startup message                                    B-7
        B6.   Subscreen scroll                                      B-8
        B7.   Usage of values                                       B-8
        B8.   Popup window                                          B-9

Appendix C.   Files in F-PC                                         C-1
        C1.   Files on the distribution disks                       C-1
        C2.   Zipped files on Disk 1                                C-2
        C3.   Zipped files on Disk 2                                C-3
        C4.   Zipped files on Disk 3                                C-5

Appendix D.     Index                                               D-1

Figures
        Figure  6.1.    The file handle                             44
        Figure  7.1.    The memory segments in F-PC                 56
        Figure  7.2.    Data structure in a colon definition        57
        Figure  8.1.    Comparison of assembly syntax               62
        Figure  8.2.    Examples of local labels                    68







F-PC USER'S MANUAL







THIRD EDITION FOR VERSION 3.5



NOVEMBER 1989





Offete Enterprises, Inc.

1306 South B Street
San Mateo,  CA  94402
Tel. [phone]