--- gforth/NEWS 1996/12/14 14:33:02 1.4 +++ gforth/NEWS 2003/03/09 22:13:50 1.15 @@ -1,8 +1,184 @@ -User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1 +User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0: + +Changes in behaviour: + +S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE). +Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to + the header format). +New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the + following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability), + with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor + 2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential + backwards-compatibility problems (see "Invoking Gforth" in the + manual). + +Operating environment: + +Default dictionary size is now 4MB. +Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more + than 2GB on 32-bit machines). +Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations. +vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs). +gforth.el mostly rewritten. +New image file format. + +New words: + +Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE +File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID +Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE +Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED] +Defining Words: CONST-DOES> +Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE +String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX? +String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE +Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP + +Miscellaneous: + +Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the + new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return + stack and instruction stream). + + +User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0: + +Changes in behaviour: + +There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least + as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth) + supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory + access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2. +Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If + you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or + do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour. +Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead, + READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on + output are in the OSs favourite format. +SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no + disassembler is available). +>HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure. +Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by + parentheses, tabs are insignificant. + +Operating environment: + +Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception. +On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more + precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack + underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address"). +Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an + uncaught THROW) in batch processing. +You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that + processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of + through gforth -i). + +Ports: + +AIX. +20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu, +19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95. + +New words: + +Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR +Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME +Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY +FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL +Deferred words: [IS] +Nested number output: <<# #>> +Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY +Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH +Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER + +Miscellaneous: + +Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among + other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook. +Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to + contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian + Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other + architectures are welcome. + + +User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0: + +Operating environment: + +Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory + the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working + directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path + now has "." in front. +gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt + command-line options). +New command-line-option: --die-on-signal +Errors are now directed to stderr. +Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty. +User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible. + +Ports: + +Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d). +Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e). +Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda). +It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for + non-OS systems). + +Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and +small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's +4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR. + +New, changed, and removed words: + +Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases + SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0. +Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of + NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008) +Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble). +Added EXCEPTION. +S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string. +Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly + changed names. + +Miscellaneous: + +Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt. +Documentation improvements. +Wordlist structure changed. +Added mini-oof. +Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into + them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken + systems (but there are again some files that won't work there). +Bug fixes. +Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches. +Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward +referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation +(for PSC1000). +More files in the compat library. + + + +User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0: + +Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems + (allocation with mmap). +gforth.fi is now fully relocatable. +fully relocatable images are now easier to create. +added primitives K and UNDER+. +Win32 support. +Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments. +some bug fixes. +added concept index; other documentation improvements. + + + +User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1: Bug fixes -User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0 + + +User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0: Portability and Installation: @@ -41,3 +217,25 @@ changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer r $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ). ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words. +----- +Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc. + +This file is part of Gforth. + +Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or +modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License +as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 +of the License, or (at your option) any later version. + +This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, +but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of +MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the +GNU General Public License for more details. + +You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License +along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software +Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA. + + +% Local Variables: +% fill-prefix: " "