SVFIG
Meeting Agenda for
Saturday, February 28, 2004
at
Cogswell College
1175 Bordeaux Dr.
Sunnyvale, CA

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Starbucks Coffee, Tea, Bagels, and Pastries

Ellipse and Arc Drawing - CH Ting
Ting found an easy way to draw ellipses and arcs. As in the circle algorithm, only addition and comparison operations are needed.

"I have extended the ellipse drawing routine to produce arcs as well. In drawing an ellipse, only addition and comparison operations are needed to speed up the drawing process. It is similar to the Bressenham line drawing routine, in which only the error from a true straight line or from an ellipse is computed. Computing the errors is much easier than computing the circumference."

The Well-Tempered Forth - Bob Smith
Temperament is a musical term that is defined as a system of compromises in the tuning of organs, pianofortes, and the like, whereby the tones generated with the vibrations of a ground tone are mutually modified and in part canceled, until their number reduced to the actual practicable scale of twelve tones to the octave.

So what does this have to do with Forth? Bob is using Win32Forth to calculate errors in tuning a keyboard instrument. He has created a few .WAV files that can be played in a comparison of musical "thirds" using a variety of historical tuning schemes. These computer-generated starting waveforms have been designed to have a substantial harmonic content that Bob hopes will enhance the temperance effect.

Lunch - on your own: Togos or other local eateries

Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Gossip

muForth - A Look under the Hood: The Bootstrap Process - David Frech
David will visit all the interesting parts of the muForth system by walking through the bootstrap process.

• dictionary structure
• tokenizer
• (text) interpreter
• native compiler
• C kernel's interaction with Forth
• create/does architecture

"By looking at each of these in turn, we will see not only how the system, which starts with quite a bare kernel, lifts itself up (by its bootstraps of course ;-) to become a quite usable system, but also what makes it unusual (as Forth systems go)."

Short Break

Hot Buttons - Kevin Appert
"I'm mad as heck and I'm not going to take it any more (or I could be by the 28th)."

Adjourn

Possible dinner at a location to be determined.

March meeting possibility: tour of Computer History Museum.

If you would like to present at an SVFIG meeting, contact Kevin Appert.