Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.11

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

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