Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.16
1.16 ! anton 1: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
! 2:
! 3: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
! 4:
! 5:
1.9 anton 6: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
7:
1.14 anton 8: Changes in behaviour:
1.10 anton 9:
1.14 anton 10: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
11: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
12: the header format).
13: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
14: following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
15: with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
16: 2). New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16 ! anton 17: backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
! 18: in the manual).
1.14 anton 19:
20: Operating environment:
21:
22: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10 anton 23: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
24: than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15 anton 25: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10 anton 26: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14 anton 27: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
28: New image file format.
1.10 anton 29:
1.14 anton 30: New words:
1.10 anton 31:
1.14 anton 32: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
33: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID
34: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
35: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
36: Defining Words: CONST-DOES>
37: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
38: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
39: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
40: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9 anton 41:
1.14 anton 42: Miscellaneous:
1.9 anton 43:
44: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
45: new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
46: stack and instruction stream).
1.10 anton 47:
1.9 anton 48:
1.8 anton 49: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
50:
51: Changes in behaviour:
52:
53: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
54: as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
55: supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
56: access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
57: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1). If
58: you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
59: do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
60: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading. Instead,
61: READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines. Newlines on
62: output are in the OSs favourite format.
63: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
64: disassembler is available).
65: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
66: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
67: parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
68:
69: Operating environment:
70:
71: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
72: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
73: precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
74: underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
75: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
76: uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
77: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
78: processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
79: through gforth -i).
80:
81: Ports:
82:
83: AIX.
84: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
85: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
86:
87: New words:
88:
89: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
90: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
91: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
92: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
93: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
94: Nested number output: <<# #>>
95: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
96: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
97: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
98:
99: Miscellaneous:
100:
101: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
102: other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
103: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
104: contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
105: Pirker). Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
106: architectures are welcome.
107:
108:
1.6 anton 109: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
110:
111: Operating environment:
112:
113: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
114: the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
115: directory). "~+" indicates the working directory. The default path
116: now has "." in front.
117: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
118: command-line options).
119: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
120: Errors are now directed to stderr.
121: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
122: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
123:
124: Ports:
125:
126: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
127: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
128: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
129: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
130: non-OS systems).
1.7 pazsan 131:
132: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
133: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
134: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6 anton 135:
136: New, changed, and removed words:
137:
138: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
139: SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
140: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
141: NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
142: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
143: Added EXCEPTION.
144: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
145: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
146: changed names.
147:
148: Miscellaneous:
149:
150: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
151: Documentation improvements.
152: Wordlist structure changed.
153: Added mini-oof.
154: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
155: them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
156: systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
157: Bug fixes.
158: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7 pazsan 159: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
160: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
161: (for PSC1000).
1.6 anton 162: More files in the compat library.
163:
164:
165:
1.5 anton 166: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
167:
168: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
169: (allocation with mmap).
170: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
171: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
172: added primitives K and UNDER+.
173: Win32 support.
174: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
175: some bug fixes.
176: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
177:
1.6 anton 178:
179:
1.5 anton 180: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4 anton 181:
182: Bug fixes
183:
1.6 anton 184:
185:
1.5 anton 186: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1 anton 187:
1.3 anton 188: Portability and Installation:
189:
1.1 anton 190: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3 anton 191: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1 anton 192: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
193: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
194: propagated by save-system.
1.3 anton 195:
196: Tools:
197:
198: Improved etags support.
199: more.fs allows output paging.
200: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
201: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
202: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
203: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
204:
205: New words:
206:
207: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
208: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
209: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
210: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
211: added POSTPONE,.
212: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
213: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
214: rewritten to use that mechanism.
215:
216: Changes to existing words:
217:
218: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1 anton 219: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
220: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3 anton 221: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
222: $?) added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1 anton 223: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3 anton 224:
1.12 anton 225: -----
1.13 anton 226: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12 anton 227:
228: This file is part of Gforth.
229:
230: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
231: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
232: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
233: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
234:
235: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
236: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
237: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
238: GNU General Public License for more details.
239:
240: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
241: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
242: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
243:
1.6 anton 244:
245: % Local Variables:
246: % fill-prefix: " "
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