On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 03:41:27AM -0400, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Some of you may remember (and some wish we could forget) a ramble I > posted about six months back about traffic lights and language design > and all the weird ways we get meaning out of such a small # of > symbols. One of the things I'd pondered was using color for syntax. > > Well, somebody else did. I just stumbled on colorForth! > > In Forth, a new word is defined by a preceeding colon, words inside a > definition are compiled, outside are executed. In colorForth a new > word is red, green words are compiled, yellow executed. This use of > color further reduces the syntax, or punctuation, needed. > > http://www.colorforth.com/cf.html
<delurk/> The issue with colorForth is that it's Chuck Moore's language. Not that Chuck Moore is a good/bad language designer, but his school of design is that *you* should create the tools that help *you* program efficiently. So, colorForth fits his grey matter, but not necessarily anyone elses. (Or, rather: matter gray yours not colorForth fits) If you look more deeply into colorForth, the editing environment is an integral part of the langauge. In effect, using the colorForth editor, you are pre-compiling the source using colors to make the Forth interpreter smaller. > Red, green and yellow! It's the language of traffic lights! Perhaps. But it's running against many of the ideals of Perl. Perhaps that just means that Perl[6] should never be syntax highlighted. :-) Z.
