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is a collection of Forth related files distributed under the terms and conditions of the GNU free software license, in the version supplied and transposed to german text.
Everything is in an experimental state and I do promise not a thing, thus there is no warranty concerning F6, the GF6 collection, nor any accompanying work, text, code or data.
Forth is a computer language and an operating system (depending on how and where it is implemented), which does not impose any limits on creative programming. A traditional style Forth program can be considered as a specialized "shell", including a commandline interpreter, and with access to all the well known Forth words, which make up any new applications.
Forth is very much like a natural language, fairly easy to learn and easy to use, and can be extended to any level of complexity required, or go "down" till very low level assembler programming.
A Forth-style programmable and extendable macro assembler is usually an integral part of those systems, as well as a source text editor, suited to the "blockfiles" which are plain ASCII with no control characters at all.
The only drawback seems to be the limitless flexibility of the language, where it wouldn't be feasible to catch every bit of an error that might occur, some time; which in Forth is thus left to the user. Therefore Forth sometimes got some "fame" as an easily crashing system, which is not true. Only, you are allowed to do such things, and no one else decides about what might be "legal" or may be "necessary" or not...
F6 was made as an experimental system for different purposes, and a system that enables easy access to the quite impressive features the language offers. I'd try to design the GF6 system as safe as possible, while not limiting its features, regarding executional speed less important.
As I always thought that there are many good 4th's around there for any kind of host cpu's, which are highly portable, standardish and well documented by texts written in the english language, this is an implementation highly specialized for the Sinclair QL (and its derivatives) with its 680xx operating systems of QDOS and SMSQ (or SMSQ/E) and comprehensively explained by texts written in the german language, because those seemed not to exist at all, while the english documentation is limited to the most essential comments.
F6 is an f.i.g.-model 64K Forth. It is not an ANSI Forth, though it is much extended, including an ANS compatibility set and most of the more remarkable features of the later standards (vocabulary stacks, locals, full memory access, OO programming, etc.), and more, new stuff.
F6 will run on any QDOS compatible platform, with no configuring nor other attention by its user required. This concept worked out successfully with the original QL equipment from JM on, and MINERVA, with SMSQ (2.76) in the QXL, with the many SMSQ/E versions (currently 2.85) running on GoldCard QLs, the QXL and with the Atari Mega ST QL Emulator, the old e.32-software inclusive. F6 did also run in the QL-emulators UQLX (modified JS or MINERVA, Linux), QLAY (true emulation, IBM-PC), and QPC(SMSQ/E, IBM-PC).
This Forth system was built "safety fast" in mind preferably for the novice to Forth, with many features and precautions an 'experienced' programmer might like to dispense with, at the cost of executional speed. Nevertheless it worked out to be fairly competitive with regard to speed and versatility, still.
The files GF6{aa}{vvv}, where {aa} is the archive as mentioned below and {vvv} is the version string, contain the complete distribution.
GF6A{vvv} is the archive of all those archives.
GF6UP{vvv} contains just what is needed for replacement to upgrade to the version of {vvv}. If more than one such file present you might need to load all of them beginning with the 1st version above the one you already posess.
The ver. 818 updates (650K) archive expands to about 2M bytes. If you cannot store that much to a single medium try UNZIP with the following options:
First EX"unzip";"-l FLP1_GF6UP818" to finding out the file length',
then EX"unzip";"FLP1_GF6UP818 T1* -d FLP2_", for example, which will extract the T1 related files to flp2_, and create the directory, if necessary, and feasible.
For the QDOS systems you'ld best use no other than the ZIP/UNZIP version from the "InfoZip Group" to unpacking the archives - any other version I know is (badly) buggy!
With ANY new F6 version you'll most probably have to re-compile the .._4th-files.
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