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[colorforth] Octal in ColorForth for Music Notation? (fwd)



I use Forth to write a tune as a string of numbers in octal (8 Base !) 
on one line - but a string of numbers are not so intuitive as the 
conventional graphical notation, which uses 5 or more lines to show 
whether the notes are going up or down, different icons for notes of 
different duration, and vertical lines to separate bars. 

Now I would like to try whether Color Forth might improve readability 
because preparsed colors would indicate immediately whether a 
number represented pitch, duration, loudness or bar number.  Preparsed 
words could be used as expression marks, key signature etc.

Like MIDI in colour?  The difference being that in Colorforth "source is 
all there is":  so the act of compiling a preparsed Colorforth score 
might be the same as its performance?  Might speed things up?  
Correct me if I'm wrong.

As a modest start, can anybody kindly tell this newbie how to get octal in
Colorforth?  The words 'base, octal, hex and decimal' exists in the asm 
listing, but my attempts to use them in a ColorForth definition have 
crashed.  I am probably missing something very simple, because 
octal numbers are obviously used by asm macro0 to build the Huffman
codes for Chuck's '48 characters' eg 170o is octal for 1111 000 
i.e ';'  173o is 1111 011 i.e. '+'  and (3 shl 4+1) is 31octal i.e. 
'or'.  

Please, somebody dispel my ignorance.

Nick Maroudas




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