Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.10

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

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