Book Review: Dr. Dobb's Toolbox of Forth
                    Edited by Marlin Ouverson
                                 
     (Available from Dr. Dobb's Catalog, 501 Galveston Drive,
      Redwood City, CA 94063, $22.95, $39.95 with diskette)
                                 
                    Reviewed by Jerry Shifrin
          (SYSOP, East Coast Forth Board - 703-442-8695)

Here's an interesting collection of Forth articles from the last
few years of Dr. Dobb's Journal. Marlin Ouverson (editor of Forth
Dimensions) has collected and updated 26 Forth articles and made
them available in a single volume. This book is organized as 5
major sections and a set of appendices. The book consists of 253
pages, sized 8 and 1/2 by 11.

Following is the contents of this volume:


Editor's Preface

Part I: FORTH - The Language

The Forth Philosophy by Kim Harris
Teaching Forth as a First Language by John S. James
Forth-83 and Vocabularies by George W. Shaw II


Part II: Forth Programs

GO in Forth by C.H. Ting
Elements of a Forth Data-Base Design by Glen B. Haydon
The Forth Sort by Mark I. Manning
SEND and RECV by Robert Taylor
Interfaces for a Mouse by Ray Duncan and Rick Wilton
Relocating Loader in Forth by Joe Barnhart
Forth Decompiler by Ray Duncan
Screen-Oriented Editor Re-Visited by Henry Laxen and Michael A.
   Perry
Evolution of a Video Editor by Wendell C. Gates, PE
H-19 Screen Editor by Albert S. Woodhull
The Conference Tree by John S. James


Part III: Mathematics in Forth

Series Expansion in Forth by Wendell C. Gates, PE
Forth Floating-Point Package by Alfred J. Monroe
Signed Integer Division by Robert L. Smith


Part IV: Modifications/Extensions

A Proposal For Strings in Forth by Ralph Deane
Non-Deterministic Control Words by Louis L. Odette
Some Forth Coding Standards by Ed Wischmeyer
Towards a More Writable Forth Syntax by Harvey Glass


Part V: Implementing Forth

Forth and the Motorola 68000 by Joe Barnhart
A 68000 Forth Assembler by Michael A. Perry
A Forth Assembler for the 6502 by William F. Ragsdale
Z8000 Forth by Louis L. Odette


Part VI: Appendices
Converting fig-FORTH Programs for Forth-83 by Ray Duncan
The Authors
For More About Forth
About the Editor


While a number of articles here are quite dated and many are
specific to a particular Forth implementation, there is still a
wealth of information which would be useful to Forth programmers.
While this book is not in the required reading list, it should be
of interest to anyone working with any of the topics discussed.

As an option, you can order a disk with the source code for the
programs described in this book. The following files are included
on the disk:

     4THSORT  TXT     4992   8-15-86   9:31a
     68KASM   TXT    17152   8-15-86  10:32a
     68KFORTH TXT     6784   8-15-86   1:53p
     ASM6502  TXT     5120   8-15-86  10:54a
     DECOMPIL TXT     5632   8-15-86  11:17a
     ELEMENTS TXT    13568   8-15-86  11:02a
     EVOLTION TXT     6272   8-15-86  11:05a
     FLOATING TXT    22400   8-15-86  11:10a
     GOFORTH  TXT     7680   8-15-86  11:18a
     H19      TXT    14720   8-15-86  11:21a
     MOUSE    TXT     6784   8-15-86   1:52p
     RELOCATE TXT    10880   8-15-86  11:25a
     SCREEN   TXT    34560   8-15-86  11:30a
     SENDRCEV TXT    12800   8-15-86   9:59a
     SERIES   TXT    10880   1-01-80  10:34a
     STRINGS  TXT     9600   8-15-86  11:33a
     SYNTAX   TXT    17536   8-15-86  11:35a
     WORDS    TXT     5888   1-01-80  10:32a
     Z8000    TXT    34688   8-15-86  11:40a

I'm not sure of the legality of putting these files up on the BBS
- many of them are marked for public, non-commercial
distribution, but the copyright laws are unclear about whether
these are part of an "anthology". For now, I'll refer all
interested persons to the publisher from whom the diskette may be
purchased.