wina ciforth -- ISO Forth Language And Environment

DESCRIPTION
Forth is a tried and proven language for evolutionary ("check as you go") programming, ideal for rapid prototyping and experiments with hardware.

wina is the 32-bit DPMI ("WIndows") version of ciforth, (common Intel Forth), an interpreter environment, scripter and compiler for Forth.

It supplies the CORE wordset of the ISO Forth standard, plus some essentials, i.a. file access and exceptions. Its power is multiplied by an extensive source library, that adds i.a. a decompiler and an integrated 386 assembler.

OPTIONS
wina without options starts an interactive system. Options are implemented by a simple mechanism through the source library, and hence are configurable.
The most important ones are

/H
Print help, i.e. the option summary, version etc.
Then exit.

/E
Load the electives , i.e. tools for interactive development.
Then start the interpreter.

/C FILE.FRT
Compile FILE.FRT to the binary FILE.EXE
Then exit.

/A, /R
Start the interpreter with the word REQUIRE available.

DOCUMENTATION
wina comes with html, ps and pdf documentation.
Version 4.0.6 has about 5 pdf-pages per Kbyte of executable code.
It documents all language features implemented and has a tutorial.
Wina.html contains only the reference documentation, for easy click through.

SOURCE
The source for the compiler and the library are part of the package. ( wina.asm and forth.lab ).

DIAGNOSTICS
Uncaught exceptions will show the error number. Positive error numbers are ciforth-specific and explained in the documentation.
Negative error numbers are OS-specific.
A mnemonic message is fetched from the library file and displayed, if possible.

CAVEAT
For all Windows with 32 bit DPMI, i.e. from 3.11 (+32 bit) on, but tested on Windows XP. Windows plus Forth is crash-happy.

AUTHOR
Copyright (c) 2000-2003 by Albert van der Horst
http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst/ciforth.html
ciforth is made available under the GNU Public License:
quality, but NO warranty.