I am looking for comments on what should be done for the morning technical sessions for at least a number of months in 1998. My thought is to do a blue sky look at what Forth should be as a 21st Century language. Sessions, which would involve rather informal participation of the attendees (voting on importance to giving suggestions), would start off with ideas and problems followed by analysis and followed by design of a 21st Century Forth concept.

To catalyze the conversation the following ideas can be considered:

1. Forth is unique in having an open interpreter. Perhaps the basic elements of the interpreter can be documented and standardized and for the basis for coding tools and libraries.

2. The open interpreter in itself in conjuction with vocabularies can form much of the control structures of applications.

3. The interpreter can be adapted to do envronmental interpretation without concern for delimitations by the use of an especially ordered dictionary such as by descending word size.

4. Dictionary matches could be made against patterns to within a tolerance as well as to an absolute match. This would allow for example a very easily developed voice recognition system and something that recognizes images that are not complete.

5. With environmental interpetation, the interpeter can be made the basic if not the entirity of the control structure for an application; the conditional patterns can themselves Forth words.

And so Forth.....

Please contact me with your comments and ideas.

Happy New Year

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