The womb keeper is a primordial program that successively calls several programs.

These programs run in the progressively more complete womb to create the facilities of the womb.

To get the womb keeper to call your program you must add it to a list in the item space file GNOSIS ASSEMBLE. The list is a series of invocations of the macro WOMB. Look at the first few lines of the definition of the WOMB macro to see how to use it.

The use of the WOMB macro is as follows:

WOMB N where N is the number of pages required to hold the code. A {primordial} domain will be constructed using the prime meter. The memory tree root is a read-write red segment key to a node whose format key is X'0FFFFF03'+16*N. Read-write page keys to the pages of your code will occupy the first N slots of that node.

Key word parameters to WOMB are as follows:

DDT=(,b) provides a symbol table in slot 10 of the domain root. "b" must be the number of pages necessary to hold the symbol table of the program of the domain. If "L" is the label of the WOMB macro then the file L SYM will be used to fetch the symbol table of the domain.

KEY4= and KEY5= allow the coder of the WOMB macro to provide keys to his program. These keys will appear in slots 4 or 5. A fetch key for slot 5 would be coded as
KEY5=(NKEY,FETCHKEY,0,designatednode). See (assemitem) for designating keys.

There is also an AUXWOMB macro which is somewhat similar.

Order code 0: The first returned key is placed in the next slot of the supplementary facilities node, and then the next program in the list is called.

Order code 1: As above, but also the second returned key is placed in the next slot of a node labeled PRIVSTUFF. (This node will contain keys not available to general programs.)

Order codes 2 and 3: like 0 and 1 respectively, except the first returned key is ignored and no slot in the supplementary facilities node is used.