For details of the Forth standards see the FAQ: general - part 1/6.

Published standards since 1978 are Forth 79 and Forth 83 from the Forth
Standards Team, ANS Forth - document X3.215-1994 - by the X3J14
Technical Committee and the Open Boot Standard.

The most recent standard, ANS Forth, defines a set of core words and
some optional extensions and takes care to allow great freedom in how
these words are implemented.  The range of hardware which can support an
ANS Forth Standard System is wider than any previous Forth standard and
probably wider than any programming language standard ever.  The
document includes 90 pages of annexes, providing an insight into the
decisions which had to be taken in drafting ANS Forth.

Copies of the standard cost $193 from the American National Standards
Institute Sales Department (212) 642-4900, but the final draft of ANS
Forth is free and available (subject to copyright restrictions) at:
 ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/dpans94.zip (Word For Windows, v2)
 ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/minerva/x3j14/dpans94.hqx (Word For Macintosh)
 ftp://taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Literature/ (plain ASCII)

 ANS Forth was adopted by ISO as an international standard and published
 in June 97 as ISO/IEC 15145:1997


The Open Boot Standard defines the use of Forth to configure the
hardware attached to a computer at startup.  It is a token-threaded,
open standard closely modelled on ANS Forth used by Sun, IBM, Motorola
and Apple.  See also section 6 below:

IEEE Std 1275-1994 is recognised as an American National Standard:
"IEEE Standard for Boot (Initialization Configuration) Firmware:
Core Requirements and Practices, IEE Std 1275-1994, 262p,
ISBN 1-55937-426-8, about $60 from IEEE Computer Society at
  The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Inc.
  345 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017-2394, USA,
  voice 1-908-981-1393, fax: 1-908-981-9667, web: http://www.ieee.org,
  email stds.info@ieee.org.

See also the Sun web-site to find:
  docs.sun.com            All manuals from Sun
  playground.sun.com      Holds the working group documents.

------------------------------

  Subject: [7] On-line Tutorials

  Getting Started with Forth -- www.sunterr.demon.co.uk/guide.htm
  More a guide to getting started than a Forth tutorial, Dave Pochin
  (FIG UK) has published this guide to help you find, install and run 
  your first Forth.

  Step-by-step instructions carry you over the pitfalls and get you
  going in the shortest possible time.
 
  The material is also packaged for easy downloading.


  Julian Noble's Forth Primer (at
  ftp://ftp.forth.org/pub/Forth/Literature/)
  dates from 1992 and he has now updated it (1999) to suit Win32Forth.
  The new primer is at 
  http://Landau1.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551/primer.txt


------------------------------

  Subject: [8] Other Documents

CHIPS

  For details of the F21 chips, see
  http://pisa.rockefeller.edu:8080/MISC/F21.specs


  For the RTX2010 from Harris Semiconductor, see
  http://www.intersil.com/data/fn/fn3/fn3961/fn3961.pdf
  (Intersil bought the company)

  Except some slight differences in the instruction set, this document
  is applicable to the RTX2000. The processors are pin-compatible.


OPTIMISING

  Bernd Paysan writes "Anton Ertl wrote a paper, 
  'RISCs Are Faster Than Stack machines', several years ago - you can
  find it on his homepage, http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/. 
  He explains how to write an optimizing Forth compiler that compiles 
  to code approximately as good as a good C compiler generates on the 
  same machine. RAFTS is well and alive (although it currently 
  generates code only for MIPS processors)."


THREADING

  Peter M. Kogge, "An Architectural Trail to Threaded-Code Systems",
  IEEE Computer Journal, Mar 1982, pages 22-32 - Explains the design
  of (a classical implementation of) Forth, starting with threaded
  code, then adding the parameter stack, constants, variables, 
  control structures, dictionary, outer interpreter and compiler."


  SB writes: "A most excellent discussion on all threading varieties
  by Brad Rodriquez is at http://www.zetetics.com/bj/papers/moving1.htm
  Be sure to download the Figures showing code layout for each
  threading method."


  Anton Erlt discusses the threading alternatives in
  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/threaded-code.html