Calm down. Come down and COMM down.
Filling the needs of helping potential colorCoders is a little like having the job of testing for neutrinos. You know they are out there, but you hardly ever run into one.
When ‘you’ do get a request, they normally come in two forms.
The first form is a bit like asking a customer if the machine is plugged in. No disgrace here. Read no malice. What I mean is that most people have read the documentation and still have this problem in one form or another.
So, what is that problem? Have you had it and guessed ahead of me?
“I don’t seem to be getting it to work as I expected” said the person on the other end of the line.
Or maybe it’s… “It’s running but it crashes every time I enter/execute something. ”
It’s that keyboard. The Dvorak-like one. The person has read that the keyboard works a particular way. They read that the thing has two graphical character boards and two number boards. They read how those boards are reached. Still, they do not seem to register that factiod and crash trying to enter code. Maybe they got past that hurdle okay, but loading and executing the new code crashes. This is normally in the form of a new person trying a math statment as his maiden voyage and using the graphical numbers rather then the number numbers.
From experience helping some of you over the years, I can tell you that typically, the load code and explode mode happens because most brand new people to try colorForth do not register that the numbers on the graphic keyboard are just that, graphics and not numbers in the sense of mathematical digits.
I am of the thought that a FAQ of colorForth should make that issue number one. Answer that first. Remind the new user/abuser colorChooser that ‘what is where’ on what keyboard.
Jeff Fox’s keyboard/editor description page is most likely the clearest, easiest to understand. I would point someone there, if they had this question. It could use a slight update for colorForth2.0a.
The second form is a little tougher and it has to do more with hardware. The display.
It used to be said that there is/was another hardware problem. The floppy drive. I don’t usually get requests for that problem. I assume it is because that people are trying as many colorForths as they can find and stop on one that boots. That fixes the floppy problems. To ‘really’ fix those floppy problems, it might be nice for us at the wiki to have a place to provide optional code known to boot from floppy.
Something similar for display. Combinations of both.
To that end, I will be bringing up some links for all kinds of hardware configured colorForths. This could be made a bit of an easier project if I can request the kernels and the machines that they run on from as many people that read this and care to share. From this point forward even until the end of time, send it. From that we can get some sort of concensus as to what is working and what is not. I have time to look over all of that information and compile it. I shall begin reading the old mailing-list posts as well, for all kinds of subjects, that one included.
COMM Down. I do not mean that there is a communications break down. I mean more like “come to the hoe down down town and get on down with your bad self”. Get some conversation going. 
There are some communications things we can consider as a group. We can have multi-person voice and text chats. The new thing to try is that Skype. Anyone wanting to colaborate in real time could use that. It could be used for a monthy or semi-anually, or what ever time frame, get together. Cheaper then really getting to gather together with out getting to gather together. Maybe we can have a cFig-world meeting with papers and everything. Each one of us presenting, giving a presentation and then fielding questions, live and in living colorForth.
Thanks Dr. Nick Maroudas for sending that tutorial on PCI. Find it at wiki, Getting Started page, colorForth 1 applications link. You can see that I’m experiemting with a way to compare blocks of various peoples versions of colorForth. Every colorForth out there is potentially different from every other one. A way to recognise easily how a colorForth should be interpreted by author and the subsequent developers list of contributors.
I suppose if you are, lets say sending code to this group, then it is a potentially different colorForth than every other one in the world and requires proper identification.
Thank you, reader…
I really wish to express my gratitude to those of you that have been following along. From the response I’ve been getting I can extrapolate those number ( singular hehe ) into the multitudes and throngs of you that have not as yet taken time, or have no necessity to drop me and the community a message now and again.
Besides being a great thing for my ego, you have provided me with something to do that I can feel good about. It is a distinct pleasure being the colorMouth of the colorForth community. It gives me reason to rise each and every day, and real work to accomplish. YOU give me this. I thank you!
Ray’s-okay!ole!