Redirect IO

The IO system consists of 4 words: EMIT, EMIT?, KEY and KEY?. The are deferred words, e.g. they can be changed at runtime.

Output

Amforth has many words like ." and type to write information. All these words do not do the output work actually, they call emit for each and every single character.

: morse-emit ( c -- )
  ... \ some code to let a buzzer beep for the character c
;
' morse-emit is emit
\ now everything gets morsed out. even the prompt
\ unless your morse-emit does not call the previous
\ emit nothing will be displeyd
s" let it beep" type

The same technique may be used for e.g. a 44780 LCD. The new code has to take care of everything like scrolling etc as well.

To complete the picture, another word emit? should be redefined. It is called in front of <emit> to check whether the output is possible. If no such check is necessary or possible, just do an ' true is emit?

Unless you do not change the turnkey action as well, everything gets reset to serial IO whenever you call WARM.

Input

Input is based upon single characters. The command key? checks whether an unread character is available and key fetches it. To read an user supplied buffer, the command accept can be used. It reads until either the buffer is filled or an end-of-line character is found (caridge return and/or line feed).

Depending on the input source, different strategies may be used. The simplest way is to poll the input device frequently and hope that no character is lost. More sophisticated is the use of interrupts. They can be called at any time and almost guarantee that no characters will be lost. The interrupt usually fills an internal small buffer key and key? can deal with.

: ps2-key-isr ( -- )
 \ get the most recent key stroke
 \ place the key-event in a queue
;
: ps2-key? ( -- f )
 \ check the input queue, return true if
 \ a key-event is unread
;
: ps2-key ( -- c )
 \ read and unqueue the oldest key-event from the
 \ queue.
;
\ the next word changes the terminal input to
\ the PS2 based system. This cannot be done interactivly!
: ps2-init ( -- )
 \ initialize ps2-key-isr
 ['] ps2-key? is key?
 ['] ps2-key  is key
;

There are some notes that may affect your program

  • If a multitasker is used take care to include calls to pause in your key? and emit? definitions.</li>

  • It is not uncommon that key calls key? in a loop until a character is available.</li>

  • AmForth uses one of the following words depending on the WANT_RX_ISR settings. It defaults in preamble.inc to WANT_RX_ISR=1.

    WANT_RX_ISR
    0 1
    rx-poll and rx?-poll rx-isr and rx?-isr

  • All IO words with more complexity (e.g. type or accept call any of the 4 deferred words. There is no need to change them.

  • Amforth uses the control characters for the line editing (e.g. backspace, TAB, CR/LF). Characters are 8 bit numbers (ASCII). Multibyte-Characters are not currently supported.

See also

Disabling the terminal command echo