[svfig-announce] February SVFIG Meeting

[Kevin Appert]

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SVFIG  Meeting Agenda for Saturday, February 28, 2004
At Cogswell College, 1175 Bordeaux Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA


09:45   Starbucks Coffee, Tea, Bagels, and Pastries

10:00   Ellipse Drawing - CH Ting
Ting found an easy way to draw ellipses. As in the circle algorithm,
only addition and comparison operations are needed.

11:00   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.

12:00   Lunch - on your own: Togos or other local eateries

13:00    Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Gossip

13:15   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)."

15:15 Break

15:30   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)."

16:00    Adjourn

After meeting - Possible dinner at a location to be determined.

March meeting possibility: tour of Computer History Museum.

If you would like to present at a SVFIG meeting, mailto:jv at zork.net