Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.9

1.9     ! anton       1: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
        !             2: 
        !             3: added words: EDIT-LINE ID. .ID CONST-DOES> K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID WORDLIST-WORDS
        !             4: 
        !             5: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
        !             6:   the header format).
        !             7: 
        !             8: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
        !             9:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
        !            10:   stack and instruction stream).
        !            11: 
        !            12: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
        !            13:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
        !            14:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
        !            15:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some
        !            16:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Invoking Gforth" in the
        !            17:   manual).
        !            18: 
1.8       anton      19: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
                     20: 
                     21: Changes in behaviour:
                     22: 
                     23: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
                     24:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
                     25:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
                     26:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
                     27: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
                     28:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
                     29:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
                     30: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
                     31:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
                     32:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
                     33: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
                     34:   disassembler is available).
                     35: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
                     36: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
                     37:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
                     38: 
                     39: Operating environment:
                     40: 
                     41: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
                     42: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
                     43:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
                     44:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
                     45: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
                     46:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
                     47: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
                     48:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
                     49:   through gforth -i).
                     50: 
                     51: Ports:
                     52: 
                     53: AIX.
                     54: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
                     55: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
                     56: 
                     57: New words:
                     58: 
                     59: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
                     60: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
                     61: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
                     62: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
                     63: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
                     64: Nested number output: <<# #>>
                     65: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
                     66: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
                     67: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
                     68: 
                     69: Miscellaneous:
                     70: 
                     71: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
                     72:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
                     73: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
                     74:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
                     75:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
                     76:   architectures are welcome.
                     77: 
                     78: 
1.6       anton      79: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
                     80: 
                     81: Operating environment:
                     82: 
                     83: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
                     84:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
                     85:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
                     86:   now has "." in front.
                     87: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
                     88:   command-line options).
                     89: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
                     90: Errors are now directed to stderr.
                     91: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
                     92: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
                     93: 
                     94: Ports:
                     95: 
                     96: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
                     97: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
                     98: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
                     99: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
                    100:   non-OS systems).
1.7       pazsan    101: 
                    102: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
                    103: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
                    104: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6       anton     105: 
                    106: New, changed, and removed words:
                    107: 
                    108: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
                    109:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
                    110: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
                    111:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
                    112: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
                    113: Added EXCEPTION.
                    114: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
                    115: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
                    116:   changed names.
                    117: 
                    118: Miscellaneous:
                    119: 
                    120: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
                    121: Documentation improvements.
                    122: Wordlist structure changed.
                    123: Added mini-oof.
                    124: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
                    125:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
                    126:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
                    127: Bug fixes.
                    128: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7       pazsan    129: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
                    130: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
                    131: (for PSC1000).
1.6       anton     132: More files in the compat library.
                    133: 
                    134: 
                    135: 
1.5       anton     136: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
                    137: 
                    138: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
                    139:        (allocation with mmap).
                    140: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
                    141: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
                    142: added primitives K and UNDER+.
                    143: Win32 support.
                    144: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
                    145: some bug fixes.
                    146: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
                    147: 
1.6       anton     148: 
                    149: 
1.5       anton     150: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4       anton     151: 
                    152: Bug fixes
                    153: 
1.6       anton     154: 
                    155: 
1.5       anton     156: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1       anton     157: 
1.3       anton     158: Portability and Installation:
                    159: 
1.1       anton     160: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3       anton     161: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1       anton     162: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
                    163: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
                    164: propagated by save-system.
1.3       anton     165: 
                    166: Tools:
                    167: 
                    168: Improved etags support.
                    169: more.fs allows output paging.
                    170: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
                    171: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
                    172: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
                    173: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
                    174: 
                    175: New words:
                    176: 
                    177: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
                    178: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
                    179: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
                    180: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
                    181: added POSTPONE,.
                    182: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
                    183: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
                    184: rewritten to use that mechanism.
                    185: 
                    186: Changes to existing words:
                    187: 
                    188: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1       anton     189: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
                    190: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3       anton     191: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
                    192: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1       anton     193: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3       anton     194: 
1.6       anton     195: 
                    196: % Local Variables:
                    197: % fill-prefix: "  "

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