[Factor-talk] SwiftForth vs. Factor

[Hugh A. <Hug...@Ro...>]

I had previously used SwiftForth ver. 2 from Forth Inc. under Windows XP, which cost me $500. Now it doesn't work properly under Windows Vista (the help system is kaput, for one thing). Forth Inc.'s help desk says: "You can buy a cheap upgrade to the current version [3]." This would cost $296, which is not cheap --- and it is still just a Windows product, with no support for Linux. It seems to me that they should have upgraded me at no charge beyond the $500 that I already paid. It is not my fault that Microsoft came out with this weirdly incompatible Vista. Considering that Factor is free, I don't see any reason to spend $296 at Forth Inc. --- that would be throwing good money after bad.

Do any of you have experience with SwiftForth or SwiftX? Their main selling point is cross-compilation to microcontrollers (the SwiftX product series). When I wrote my MFX (MiniForth X-compiler) though, I wrote it from scratch in UR/Forth because Forth Inc. wouldn't provide source-code for SwiftForth/SwiftX, but LMI did provide source-code for UR/Forth (requiring a non-disclosure statement). In some ways, my cross-compiler was actually better than the SwiftX products, despite being written in UR/Forth which is rather primitive compared to SwiftForth. Have any of you guys done any cross-compilation in Factor?