Why?					 Why, Rick? WHY???
		
	The build dependancies of an all-shasm program are as minimal
		as possible for CPU-specific code. I'm writing a
		Forth-like language in asmacs/shasm, which shasm will 
		make very portable. 
	It just continuously cracks me up.
	It occupies what was a vacant peg on the unix tools pegboard,
		a vacancy for something very basic and versatile.
	I know the shell and x86 asm for other reasons, so combining them
		was not an enormous job.
	The asmacs names are helpful.
	Interactivity is helpful when hand-coding something.
	Forth guys don't like big complex toolchains.

shasm might be useful for...
	teaching. Big time. Self-teaching. Add some notes.
	converting between Intel, gas, and Plan9 assembly syntaxes
	various bootstrap situations. You can have a shasm for
		 a new CPU quickly.
	hand-optimizing otherwise mostly high-level language programs
	scripts that generate images on the fly
	scripts that generate anything on the fly, e.g....
		font editing
		algorithmic graphic art
		interactive test data generation

shasm doesn't particularly lend itself to...
	disassembly of binary code
	currently prevailing software marketing methods
	cooperation with complex toolchains, with fancy linkers,
		debuggers and so on. It could, but that stuff won't be
		by me. shasm does however interact seamlessly with the
		arbitrary command by the usual pipes and so on.

shasm might become...
	broader in machine support
	a compiler. BCPL looks like a short hop, for example. The asmacs
		m4 macros that preceded shasm are a bit more H3sm-like, 
		as another example.
	a compiled program or suite of commands. shasm doesn't use eval.
	a gas back-end	
	part of a utility to edit arbitrary existing binary files.


Rick Hohensee   www.clienux.com         humbubba@smart.net
:; cLIeNUX /dev/tty2  22:07:20   /
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