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documentation changes

    1: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
    2: 
    3: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
    4: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
    5: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
    6:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
    7:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
    8:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
    9: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
   10:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
   11:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
   12:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
   13: 
   14: 
   15: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
   16: 
   17: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
   18: 
   19: 
   20: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
   21: 
   22: Changes in behaviour:
   23: 
   24: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
   25: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
   26:   the header format).
   27: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
   28:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
   29:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
   30:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
   31:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
   32:   in the manual).
   33: 
   34: Operating environment:
   35: 
   36: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
   37: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
   38:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
   39: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
   40: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
   41: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
   42: New image file format.
   43: 
   44: New words:
   45: 
   46: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
   47: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
   48: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
   49: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
   50: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
   51: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
   52: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
   53: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
   54: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
   55: 
   56: Miscellaneous:
   57: 
   58: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
   59:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
   60:   stack and instruction stream).
   61: 
   62: 
   63: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
   64: 
   65: Changes in behaviour:
   66: 
   67: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
   68:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
   69:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
   70:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
   71: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
   72:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
   73:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
   74: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
   75:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
   76:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
   77: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
   78:   disassembler is available).
   79: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
   80: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
   81:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
   82: 
   83: Operating environment:
   84: 
   85: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
   86: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
   87:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
   88:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
   89: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
   90:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
   91: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
   92:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
   93:   through gforth -i).
   94: 
   95: Ports:
   96: 
   97: AIX.
   98: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
   99: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
  100: 
  101: New words:
  102: 
  103: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
  104: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
  105: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
  106: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
  107: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
  108: Nested number output: <<# #>>
  109: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
  110: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
  111: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
  112: 
  113: Miscellaneous:
  114: 
  115: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
  116:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
  117: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
  118:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  119:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  120:   architectures are welcome.
  121: 
  122: 
  123: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  124: 
  125: Operating environment:
  126: 
  127: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  128:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  129:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  130:   now has "." in front.
  131: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  132:   command-line options).
  133: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  134: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  135: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  136: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  137: 
  138: Ports:
  139: 
  140: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  141: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  142: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  143: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  144:   non-OS systems).
  145: 
  146: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  147: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  148: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  149: 
  150: New, changed, and removed words:
  151: 
  152: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  153:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  154: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  155:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  156: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  157: Added EXCEPTION.
  158: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  159: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  160:   changed names.
  161: 
  162: Miscellaneous:
  163: 
  164: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  165: Documentation improvements.
  166: Wordlist structure changed.
  167: Added mini-oof.
  168: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  169:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  170:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  171: Bug fixes.
  172: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  173: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  174: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  175: (for PSC1000).
  176: More files in the compat library.
  177: 
  178: 
  179: 
  180: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  181: 
  182: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  183: 	(allocation with mmap).
  184: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  185: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  186: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  187: Win32 support.
  188: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  189: some bug fixes.
  190: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  191: 
  192: 
  193: 
  194: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  195: 
  196: Bug fixes
  197: 
  198: 
  199: 
  200: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  201: 
  202: Portability and Installation:
  203: 
  204: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  205: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  206: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  207: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  208: propagated by save-system.
  209: 
  210: Tools:
  211: 
  212: Improved etags support.
  213: more.fs allows output paging.
  214: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  215: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  216: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  217: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  218: 
  219: New words:
  220: 
  221: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  222: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  223: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  224: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  225: added POSTPONE,.
  226: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  227: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  228: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  229: 
  230: Changes to existing words:
  231: 
  232: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  233: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  234: reveals into that wordlist.
  235: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  236: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  237: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  238: 
  239: -----
  240: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  241: 
  242: This file is part of Gforth.
  243: 
  244: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  245: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  246: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  247: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  248: 
  249: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  250: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  251: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  252: GNU General Public License for more details.
  253: 
  254: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  255: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  256: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  257: 
  258: 
  259: % Local Variables:
  260: % fill-prefix: "  "