euroFORTH '97

Embedded Communications

euroFORTH '97 was held at St. Anne's College, Oxford, England, 26-28 September. A copy of the proceedings is available from MPE Ltd..

This years conference was sponsored by:

This year's conference has more delegates and visitors than ever before, and demonstrates how Forth is more widespread than even its practitioners believe. The sophistication in the approaches to problems. The applications handled by Forth are increasing in size and complexity, and some of the papers discuss how the methodologies required to handle complexity in software, both in terms of code size and in terms of team programming, cna be applied to modern Forth systems.

The theme of this year's conference is Embedded Communications, and I am very pleased that we have several papers on this topic, including the use of the IX1 stack networking papers cover the CAN filedbus and a TCP/IP stack in Forth. As ever, the actual topic of a euroForth conference emerges when we recieve the papers. This year, one of the emerging themes is safety and certification, particularly as part of the problems of managing large software projects. This is related to an interest expressed before the conference by several delegates in source documentation and management.

Apart from our thanks to all delegates for their enthusiasm and their papers, our thanks also go to those who organised the conference. Peter Knaggs and his committee looked after the refereed papers. Joan Perham and Sarah Windless performed the administration of the conference, and its successful running is due to them. The conference sponsors enabled money to be available for student sponsorship.

Stephen Pelc,
Conference Chairman

Two reports of this years conference are available, one by Paul Bennett and the other by Paul Frenger.

Presentations include:

Networks
- A tale of 3 Forths, by N. Nelson
- The PowerNet UDP/IP Stack, by Steven Coul, Graham Stevnson and Stephen Pelc
- Distributed Data Acquisition and Processing Systems for Industry, by A.J. Wilcox and D.R.H. Baggs
Language and Notation
- Objects in HolonForth, by Wolf Wejgaard
- Data in DSSP -- Prefix Access in Postfix Language, by Dr. Sergey A. Sidorov
- Perl vs Forth, by Dr. Peter Knaggs
- Rapid development of real time multi-sequence Control programmes, by J.M. Morrish
- A Truly International Standard, by Dr. Peter Knaggs
- Forth: Past, Present, Future, by Howerd Oakford
- A Landscape and its Map, by Ewald Pfau
Applications
- A Portable Open Software Architecture for Industry, by Stephen Pelc
- TIDE: Exploiting Forth in a Windows Environment, by Martin Rand and Pete Brownlow
- Forth and Artifical Vision, by Paul Frenger M.D.
- Real Time Maze Solving, by Duncan Louttit
Techniques
- The Structure of a Forth Native Code Compiler, by M. Anton Ertl and Christian Pirker (Refereed)
- Taming the Trampoline, by Adin Tevet
- Flashsort: Sorting by in situ Permutation, by Karl-Dietrich Neubert
- STDCALL Treaded Code and its Impact on Debugging, by Egmont Woitzel and Stephan Lange
- Fuzzy Interpreter, by John D. Carpenter
User Interface and Usability
- DED (DSSP: Editor + Debugger), by Dmitry V. Frantov and Mikhail N. Shumakov
- Interfacing to the Windows 95 Common Controls, by Matt Purvis amd Stephen Pelc
- MINOS -- Visual bigFORTH, by Bernd Paysan
Critical Systems
- Forth in Safety Critical Systems Configuration and Certification, by Paul E. Bennett
- The Error Reporting and Handling Solution in Open Firmware Selftest Methods, by Michael Milendorf (Refereed)
- Forth in critical care environments, by Malcolm Bugler
Workshops
- Source Code Management - Chair: Paul E. Bennett
- Internationalisation - Chair: Dr. Peter Knaggs

There where two refereed papers presented:

The Structure of a Forth Native Code Compiler, by M. Anton Ertl and Christian Pirker
The Error Reporting and Handling Solution in Open Firmware Selftest Methods, by Michael Milendorf