I hear you ask why, which is hardly surprising.
The only prerequisite is node
and npm
(or yarn
).
npm install webforth
Installs webforth, note there are intentionally no dependencies
in the browser versions, and the only dependency in the node version is to
the builtin fs
If you only want to host the web version, then cloning the git repo should be sufficient.
const {Forth, ForthNodeExtensions} = require('webforth');
Or alternatively
import {Forth, ForthNodeExtensions} from 'webforth';
Then ...
const foo = new Forth({extensions: ForthNodeExtensions);
foo.compileForthInForth()
.then(() => foo.interpret('1 2 3 ROT .S')) // Pass forth to interpret
.then(() => foo.console()) // Interactive console
.catch((err) => console.log('Error',err));
This ...
Try 1 2 3 ROT .S
A simple forth command and output the stack
This is an experimental API - it might change,
In particular, we will be adding ability to load forth files into an instance.
Note, it should be possible to run multiple instances, but this isn't tested fully yet. e.g.
import {Forth, ForthNodeExtensions} from webforth;
const foo1 = new Forth({extensions: ForthNodeExtensions});
const foo2 = new Forth({extensions: ForthNodeExtensions});
foo2.compileForthInForth().then(() => foo2.console());
foo1.compileForthInForth().then(() => foo1.interpret('1 2 .S'));
You should be able to run this at https://mitra.biz/forth/console.html
To make your own copy, clone the repo,
Start a simple http server such as that included in Node
cd webforth # Or wherever you cloned it
http-server &
Open http://localhost:8080/console.html
in a browser.
The HTML uses Web Components and TextEncoders, so they should work in any modern browsers such as: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Android, iOS. It runs in Safari on OSX but slowly.
The phone experience of console.html is suboptimal, I might get around to doing a mobile friendly version eventually, but if someone else does then I'll be happy to apply a PR.
It should compile Forth (you can verify in the web console) and present a console and entry box in which you can type any Forth.
Everything is happening locally i.e. this is forth running in your browser.
For the browser version open the Console. The process of building the dictionary puts errors and progress there.
Feel free to open a new issue on the git repo but the first thing I'm going to ask for is a copy of whatever appeared in the Console, or in Node.
There are two useful Forth words you can insert in either a definition, or the code to help debug.
testFlags
is a Forth variable allowing different levels of debugging. Its binary:
testDepthOffset
can be set to change the number of levels deep that threading is tracedFbreak
: Just calls a short routine that generates a console log, when working in my IDE
I set a breakpoint here. TODO - document how to run ANS tests from separate repo
See [docs/Cross Compiling.md](docs/Cross Compiling.md)
It supports the Forth2012 file extension words REQUIRE
INCLUDE
etc
Because browsers don't have access to fs
it uses a separate class
that imports fs
.
cd scripts
node /forth_console_with_fs_via_node.js
...
webFORTH V0.00.15
REQUIRE ../sandbox/tester.f
\ This will load the forth in tester.f and anything that file INCLUDEs
File support is in its early days and I want to extend it to be web-aware.
This is intended to be standards compliant, but then Forth has multiple standards!
Its status, and progress to passing the FORTH2012 test suite is visible in issue#83, as of now (Aug 2023):
In addition it does not implement (not tested by Hayes) the Forth2012 word: ENVIRONMENT?
Yes please !
Please introduce yourself on issue#1
Pull requests are welcome, and even quite significant changes at this stage, but let us discuss first (open a new issue in GIT).
CHANGELOG.md
README.md
reflects any changesVER
in index.js and version in package.json to next even numbernpm publish
master
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in index.js and version in package.json to next odd number