Thomasson Don. Advanced Spectrum Forth

MelbourneHouse, 1984. — 134 p. — ISBN: 0-86161-142-X.FORTH was the brain child of a man called Charles Moore. After trying out various aspects of the concept for some years, he began to fit them together towards the end of the nineteen-sixties, though it was some time before a completely coherent version emerged. Seeing his invention as a 'fourth generation' computer language, but restricted by his equipment to five-letter names, he chose to drop the 'u' and call his concept 'FORTH'.
Since then, the language has developed in various directions, the two mainstream versions being FORTH79 and fig-FORTH. The 'fig' prefix refers to the FORTH Interest Group, of San Carlos, California, who have endeavoured to make the language accessible to as wide a range of users as possible.
That range now extends to users of a number of microcomputers, but each implementation is slightly different from the others, the original definition of fig-FORTH allowing ample scope for individual choice of facilities. This book is specifically based on Spectrum FORTH by Abersoft, which is perhaps the most complete and user-friendly version available. Much of what is said will be equally applicable to other versions of fig-FORTH, and where the other versions omit some of the words described it will be possible to extend them to match the Abersoft standard, though some facilities may be more difficult to provide.