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1 Goals of Gforth ¶

The goal of the Gforth Project is to develop a standard model for Standard Forth. This can be split into several subgoals:

• Gforth should conform to the Forth Standard.
• It should be a model, i.e. it should define all the implementation-dependent things.
• It should become standard, i.e. widely accepted and used. This goal is the most difficult one.

To achieve these goals Gforth should be

• Similar to previous models (fig-Forth, F83)
• Powerful. It should provide for all the things that are considered necessary today and even some that are not yet considered necessary.
• Efficient. It should not get the reputation of being exceptionally slow.
• Free.
• Available on many machines/easy to port.

Have we achieved these goals?

Gforth conforms to the Forth-94 (ANS Forth) and Forth-2012 standards.

We have changed some of the internal data structures (in particular, the headers) over time, so Gforth does not provide the stability of implementation details that we originally aimed for; they were too constraining for a long-term project like Gforth. However, we still aim for a high level of stability.

Gforth is quite popular and is treated by some like a de-facto standard.

It has some similarities to and some differences from previous models.

It has powerful features, and the version 1.0 indicates that it can do everything (and more) that we originally envisioned. That does not mean that we will stop development.

We certainly have achieved and exceeded our execution speed goals (see Performance)¹.

Gforth is free and available on many platforms.

• Stability Goals