It was useful when we still had the relinker, but now it has no use.
I was waiting a bit to see if the distinction would be useful again,
but it seems like it won't.
I'm not sure why I chose null-terminated initially. Probably because
the z80asm version had null-terminated strings.
Length-prefixes strings are the traditional form of strings in Forth
and it's a bit easier to work with them with traditional forth words
when they're under this form.
I'm planning on going back to 8-bit branching. 16-bit br cells incur
a non-negligible penalty and, while at first 64 words (128 bytes
forward or backward) seemed a bit limiting, I now don't see why one
would ever construct such a big branch. It would be un-forthy.
Also, I looked at using BC instead of IY to hold IP and the transition
would be a lot easier with 8-bit branching.
In this commit, all I do is add overflow checks in IF. The mechanic
below doesn't change. I'll give myself some time to think it over so
that I avoid yet another back and forth.
Virgil Dupras