Re: [colorforth] TCP State Engine

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <kc5tja@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:53 pm, maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Is this more floundering speculation, or did actually have
> something to say about TCP?

What I'm about to write is basically a message of support for BOTH sides 
of this issue.

HTTP is basically, as most Internet protocols, a refinement of Telnet.  
And Telnet is itself nothing more than the most basic application of 
TCP.  It follows, then, that a tool analogous to wget can be implemented 
in Forth in as little as 5 blocks, quite easily, 3 for TCP, one for the 
actual act of grabbing the data, and maybe one or two for handling 
recursion into the retrieved HTML file, so as to handle automatic 
grabbing of pictures and the like.

It is the *rendering* of the web page that will take the additional 
blocks.  However, I am fundamentally opposed to having an all-in-one 
file-grabber-and-viewer utility anyway.  I think a browser should do 
just that: browse.  The network interface should just be a plug-in to 
the browser proper.

> Right, Forth is not appropriate for anything but the most
> trivial applications.

I couldn't agree more with this.  Fortunately for us, most problems are 
quite trivial, as long as you let go of certain basic assumptions and 
presuppositions (such as, for example, a web "browser" being something 
that (a) handles network file retrieval for you, (b) performs rendering, 
(c) handles e-mail for you, (d) is responsible for displaying animations 
and the like, (e) probably more that I completely forgot about).  

--
Samuel A. Falvo II


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