Updated README.

[scheme.forth.jl.git] / README.md

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 scheme.forth.jl
 ---------------
 
-A hobby scheme implementation for FORTH 83. Specifically it is targeted at 
-[forth.jl](http://github.com/tgvaughan/forth.jl) which is an implementation
-of FORTH on top of [Julia](http://www.julialang.org), hence the name.  However
-it does not rely on anything but standard FORTH 83 words.
+A hobby Scheme interpreter for FORTH 83. Specifically it is targeted at
+[forth.jl](http://github.com/tgvaughan/forth.jl) which is an implementation of
+FORTH on top of [Julia](http://www.julialang.org), hence the name.  It began
+life as a fairly direct port of Peter Micheaux's [Bootstrap
+Scheme](https://github.com/petermichaux/bootstrap-scheme) (as described in
+[this wonderful series of blog
+posts](http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch-introduction)) from
+C to forth, but also includes variadic compound function support, mark-sweep
+garbage collection, quasiquotation, and a very basic (non-hygenic) macro
+system.
+
+In future, I plan to also implement a more complete numerical tower to bring it closer to
+[R5RS](http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/).
+
+The goal is for the interpreter to be complete enough to be used to complete
+the majority of the exercises found in [SICP](http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/).
+
+Running the interpreter
+=======================
+
+To run this Scheme interpreter, first open Julia from the directory that contains
+this README file. If you've not done so already, install forth.jl using the
+following command:
+
+    julia> Pkg.clone("https://github.com/tgvaughan/forth.jl")
+
+Then, import and run the Forth system:
+
+    julia> import forth
+    julia> forth.run()
+    Welcome to forth.jl!
+
+Once Forth is running, execute the Scheme source and fire up the
+REPL using the following commands:
+
+    include scheme.4th  ok
+    scheme repl
+    Welcome to scheme.forth.jl!
+    Use Ctrl-D to exit.
+
+    >
+
+At this point you can start entering Scheme commands.  For example,
+
+    > (define (factorial n)
+        (if (= n 0)
+          1
+          (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))
+    ; ok
+    > (factorial 5)
+    ; 120
+
+License
+=======
+
+This software is free (as in freedom) and is distributed under the terms
+of version 3 of the GNU General Public License.  A copy of this license
+is included in this repository in the file COPYING.