[gforth] / gforth / NEWS  

gforth: gforth/NEWS


1 : anton 1.9 User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
2 :    
3 : anton 1.14 Changes in behaviour:
4 : anton 1.10
5 : anton 1.14 S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
6 :     Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
7 :     the header format).
8 :     New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
9 :     following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
10 :     with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
11 :     2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
12 :     backwards-compatibility problems (see "Invoking Gforth" in the
13 :     manual).
14 :    
15 :     Operating environment:
16 :    
17 :     Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
18 : anton 1.10 Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
19 :     than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
20 : anton 1.11 Gforth can now deal with well with broken pipes in most situations.
21 : anton 1.10 vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
22 : anton 1.14 gforth.el mostly rewritten.
23 :     New image file format.
24 : anton 1.10
25 : anton 1.14 New words:
26 : anton 1.10
27 : anton 1.14 Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
28 :     File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
29 :     Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
30 :     Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
31 :     Defining Words: CONST-DOES>
32 :     Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
33 :     String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
34 :     String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
35 :     Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
36 : anton 1.9
37 : anton 1.14 Miscellaneous:
38 : anton 1.9
39 :     Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
40 :     new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
41 :     stack and instruction stream).
42 : anton 1.10
43 : anton 1.9
44 : anton 1.8 User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
45 :    
46 :     Changes in behaviour:
47 :    
48 :     There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
49 :     as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
50 :     supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
51 :     access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
52 :     Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
53 :     you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
54 :     do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
55 :     Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
56 :     READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
57 :     output are in the OSs favourite format.
58 :     SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
59 :     disassembler is available).
60 :     >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
61 :     Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
62 :     parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
63 :    
64 :     Operating environment:
65 :    
66 :     Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
67 :     On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
68 :     precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
69 :     underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
70 :     Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
71 :     uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
72 :     You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
73 :     processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
74 :     through gforth -i).
75 :    
76 :     Ports:
77 :    
78 :     AIX.
79 :     20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
80 :     19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
81 :    
82 :     New words:
83 :    
84 :     Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
85 :     Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
86 :     Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
87 :     FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
88 :     Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
89 :     Nested number output: <<# #>>
90 :     Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
91 :     Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
92 :     Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
93 :    
94 :     Miscellaneous:
95 :    
96 :     Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
97 :     other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
98 :     Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
99 :     contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
100 :     Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
101 :     architectures are welcome.
102 :    
103 :    
104 : anton 1.6 User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
105 :    
106 :     Operating environment:
107 :    
108 :     Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
109 :     the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
110 :     directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
111 :     now has "." in front.
112 :     gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
113 :     command-line options).
114 :     New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
115 :     Errors are now directed to stderr.
116 :     Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
117 :     User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
118 :    
119 :     Ports:
120 :    
121 :     Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
122 :     Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
123 :     Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
124 :     It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
125 :     non-OS systems).
126 : pazsan 1.7
127 :     Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
128 :     small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
129 :     4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
130 : anton 1.6
131 :     New, changed, and removed words:
132 :    
133 :     Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
134 :     SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
135 :     Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
136 :     NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
137 :     Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
138 :     Added EXCEPTION.
139 :     S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
140 :     Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
141 :     changed names.
142 :    
143 :     Miscellaneous:
144 :    
145 :     Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
146 :     Documentation improvements.
147 :     Wordlist structure changed.
148 :     Added mini-oof.
149 :     Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
150 :     them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
151 :     systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
152 :     Bug fixes.
153 :     Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
154 : pazsan 1.7 Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
155 :     referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
156 :     (for PSC1000).
157 : anton 1.6 More files in the compat library.
158 :    
159 :    
160 :    
161 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
162 :    
163 :     Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
164 :     (allocation with mmap).
165 :     gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
166 :     fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
167 :     added primitives K and UNDER+.
168 :     Win32 support.
169 :     Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
170 :     some bug fixes.
171 :     added concept index; other documentation improvements.
172 :    
173 : anton 1.6
174 :    
175 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
176 : anton 1.4
177 :     Bug fixes
178 :    
179 : anton 1.6
180 :    
181 : anton 1.5 User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
182 : anton 1.1
183 : anton 1.3 Portability and Installation:
184 :    
185 : anton 1.1 Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
186 : anton 1.3 Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
187 : anton 1.1 Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
188 :     saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
189 :     propagated by save-system.
190 : anton 1.3
191 :     Tools:
192 :    
193 :     Improved etags support.
194 :     more.fs allows output paging.
195 :     Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
196 :     Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
197 :     Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
198 :     Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
199 :    
200 :     New words:
201 :    
202 :     Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
203 :     Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
204 :     added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
205 :     Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
206 :     added POSTPONE,.
207 :     Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
208 :     semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
209 :     rewritten to use that mechanism.
210 :    
211 :     Changes to existing words:
212 :    
213 :     EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
214 : anton 1.1 HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
215 :     reveals into that wordlist.
216 : anton 1.3 changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
217 :     $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
218 : anton 1.1 ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
219 : anton 1.3
220 : anton 1.12 -----
221 : anton 1.13 Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
222 : anton 1.12
223 :     This file is part of Gforth.
224 :    
225 :     Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
226 :     modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
227 :     as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
228 :     of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
229 :    
230 :     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
231 :     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
232 :     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
233 :     GNU General Public License for more details.
234 :    
235 :     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
236 :     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
237 :     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
238 :    
239 : anton 1.6
240 :     % Local Variables:
241 :     % fill-prefix: " "

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