For those of us interested in Forth it can be quite frustrating experiencing the differences between the various flavours of what is supposed to be a standard language. Even more frustrating is finding certain books which are more concerned in teaching the philosophy of Forth rather than any useful programming examples, books such as those by Leo Brodie.
The examples that do exist also have a dis-concerting habit of not running on your Forth version without a massive workaround making learning the language seem almost impossible.
However all is not lost as I have recently rediscovered a publication that not only goes into some depth with the language but provides some excellent useful programming examples especially the ones pertaining to fixed point arithmetic (decimals) all easily explained.
More germain to this post though is that that it works excellently well with Toddy Forth .
The book assumes the reader is using Forth-79 and as Toddy is as near as dammit 79 like as you are going to get on the 81 I have yet to find an example in the book that requires any serious conversion if any at all with most working as printed.
I believe Toddy is now well enough developed, (ZXpand compatable,UDG's, plus an editor and at last a call to break can be evoked at runtime) to be regarded as the standard Forth for the ZX81 and is still being developed(floating point maths on the to do list) by its creator Kelly Abrantes
I cannot find a downloadable version but an on-line version can be found here..
http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/BookReader ... 1/mode/1up
For those wishing to try Forth then Toddy Forth along with this book is a very good way to start learning this most curious language.
Some reading for Toddy Forth.
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
The cheapest I can find for sale is used £34.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0905104226/
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
For everyone using Toddy Forth, is worth it to correct the differences and make Toddy Forth more conforming to Forth-79?
The changes to be made are simple and I would have no objection to making them. So I leave the decision to who actually uses the system.
The changes to be made are simple and I would have no objection to making them. So I leave the decision to who actually uses the system.
1 x ZX81, 2 x TK85 , 1 TK82C, 1 TK95, 1 x Alphacom 32 printer, 1 x ZXpand
ZeXtender board, Joy81 - Programmable Joystick Controller, Turbo Sound 81
http://zx81.eu5.org
https://toddysoftware.itch.io/
ZeXtender board, Joy81 - Programmable Joystick Controller, Turbo Sound 81
http://zx81.eu5.org
https://toddysoftware.itch.io/
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
If it is easy to do then yes as most books on the subject, especially the older publications, contain examples that will be more usable to those learning Toddy Forth rather than having to adapt those examples.
As you told me recently Toddy has some Forth 83 elements included(at least one example in one of Leo Brodies books uses Forth 83 and gives an answer different to Toddy) and as this was a hot topic to some Forth purists and the use of floored maths which can sometimes give answers not expected then, Forth79 is the standard to follow I would say for Toddy before you go on to pursue the other Forths you mentioned to me.
I understand also you will be making a Toddy version more acceptable to Memotech style keyboards which many of us use and I applaud you for this because as well as making Toddy more user friendly, by using the Sinclair ROM routine instead of a custom routine you will also also free up extra memory. Anyone wishing to keep the custom routine can use V1.5 as normal. Seeing as Forth definitions are short by nature adding a custom keyboard routine just for the autorepeat it has seems unnecessary.
One other feature I think important to add is a double precision divide D/ because the single precision UM/MOD operator only works on very small numbers. We have D* , D+ and D- so D/ is needed I feel.
We do have */MOD which will allow a double precision number to be divided but also requires a third number on the stack for the multiplication element and and even if we use 1 as that element it may not be accurate in all cases. I will readily accept your wisdom on this.
These are just my opinions Kelly and I congratulate and thank you for your continued work on this fascinating strange language and for making Toddy my goto Forth for the ZX81.
As for Alan Winfield's book although no PDF seems to exist I must have had a PDF at one time as I have it printed out in a folder sadly in light blue ink as that is all I had at the time, so I will search all my old hard drives to see if I kept it.
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
It will be relatively easy to grab all the jpegs from the home page, and combine them to PDF. And after that even order a physical book with all of those self publishing sites that exist online.
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
A bit late in the day but I finally managed to find a PDF version of Alan Winfield's book, The complete Forth.
For those interested it can be found here....
https://ia803101.us.archive.org/6/items ... _forth.pdf
For those interested it can be found here....
https://ia803101.us.archive.org/6/items ... _forth.pdf
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
Just came across this post. I have this book! I have the edition with the dark cover that mrtinb linked to. I bought it in the mid eighties at Radio Shack since I was interested in Forth. I remember it was a very informative book. I'll have to blow off the dust and reread it. 
2X Timex Sinclair 1000, ZX81, ZX80Core, 5X 16K Ram Pack, ZXBlast, ZX P file to Ear Input Signal Converter, Elf II
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
The only reasons I champion this particular book is because not only are the examples and exercises contained useful and informative but are completely compatible with Kmurta and Rogan josh's ZX81 Forth 79 implementations.
A few people mention Leo Brodies works but to be honest I find the examples he gives are not very usable, his teaching style and the silly cartoons peppered about a tad infantile but most importantly the PDF's of his two famous works found on the net are no longer based on Forth79. I did read somewhere that when he found out that his publishers were not reprinting the books he gave permission for online versions with the caveat that they be brought up to ANS Forth standard so their Forth 79 usability is somewhat negated. So unless you have the original books or a PDF of the original it becomes pretty heavy going trying to get his examples to work and there is enough online Forth works that are incompatible with Forth 79 without adding any more in my opinion.
A few people mention Leo Brodies works but to be honest I find the examples he gives are not very usable, his teaching style and the silly cartoons peppered about a tad infantile but most importantly the PDF's of his two famous works found on the net are no longer based on Forth79. I did read somewhere that when he found out that his publishers were not reprinting the books he gave permission for online versions with the caveat that they be brought up to ANS Forth standard so their Forth 79 usability is somewhat negated. So unless you have the original books or a PDF of the original it becomes pretty heavy going trying to get his examples to work and there is enough online Forth works that are incompatible with Forth 79 without adding any more in my opinion.
Re: Some reading for Toddy Forth.
I have a hardcopy of Learning Forth, and I've printed my own copy of Thinking Forth. The great thing about Thinking Forth is not the examples, but the approach to designing software, that were way ahead of it's time. The same ideas from Thinking Forth have now been presented in modern book like Clean Code. However I think Thinking Forth is a good read for any programmer, coding Forth or not.