Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.18

1.18    ! anton       1: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
        !             2: 
        !             3: bugfixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
        !             4: 
        !             5: 
1.16      anton       6: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
                      7: 
                      8: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
                      9: 
                     10: 
1.9       anton      11: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
                     12: 
1.14      anton      13: Changes in behaviour:
1.10      anton      14: 
1.14      anton      15: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
                     16: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
                     17:   the header format).
                     18: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
                     19:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
                     20:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
                     21:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16      anton      22:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
                     23:   in the manual).
1.14      anton      24: 
                     25: Operating environment:
                     26: 
                     27: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10      anton      28: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
                     29:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15      anton      30: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10      anton      31: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14      anton      32: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
                     33: New image file format.
1.10      anton      34: 
1.14      anton      35: New words:
1.10      anton      36: 
1.14      anton      37: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
                     38: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
                     39: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
                     40: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
1.17      anton      41: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14      anton      42: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
                     43: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
                     44: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
                     45: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9       anton      46: 
1.14      anton      47: Miscellaneous:
1.9       anton      48: 
                     49: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
                     50:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
                     51:   stack and instruction stream).
1.10      anton      52: 
1.9       anton      53: 
1.8       anton      54: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
                     55: 
                     56: Changes in behaviour:
                     57: 
                     58: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
                     59:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
                     60:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
                     61:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
                     62: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
                     63:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
                     64:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
                     65: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
                     66:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
                     67:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
                     68: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
                     69:   disassembler is available).
                     70: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
                     71: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
                     72:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
                     73: 
                     74: Operating environment:
                     75: 
                     76: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
                     77: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
                     78:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
                     79:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
                     80: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
                     81:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
                     82: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
                     83:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
                     84:   through gforth -i).
                     85: 
                     86: Ports:
                     87: 
                     88: AIX.
                     89: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
                     90: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
                     91: 
                     92: New words:
                     93: 
                     94: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
                     95: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
                     96: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
                     97: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
                     98: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
                     99: Nested number output: <<# #>>
                    100: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
                    101: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
                    102: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
                    103: 
                    104: Miscellaneous:
                    105: 
                    106: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
                    107:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
                    108: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
                    109:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
                    110:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
                    111:   architectures are welcome.
                    112: 
                    113: 
1.6       anton     114: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
                    115: 
                    116: Operating environment:
                    117: 
                    118: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
                    119:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
                    120:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
                    121:   now has "." in front.
                    122: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
                    123:   command-line options).
                    124: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
                    125: Errors are now directed to stderr.
                    126: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
                    127: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
                    128: 
                    129: Ports:
                    130: 
                    131: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
                    132: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
                    133: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
                    134: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
                    135:   non-OS systems).
1.7       pazsan    136: 
                    137: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
                    138: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
                    139: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6       anton     140: 
                    141: New, changed, and removed words:
                    142: 
                    143: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
                    144:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
                    145: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
                    146:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
                    147: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
                    148: Added EXCEPTION.
                    149: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
                    150: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
                    151:   changed names.
                    152: 
                    153: Miscellaneous:
                    154: 
                    155: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
                    156: Documentation improvements.
                    157: Wordlist structure changed.
                    158: Added mini-oof.
                    159: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
                    160:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
                    161:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
                    162: Bug fixes.
                    163: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7       pazsan    164: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
                    165: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
                    166: (for PSC1000).
1.6       anton     167: More files in the compat library.
                    168: 
                    169: 
                    170: 
1.5       anton     171: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
                    172: 
                    173: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
                    174:        (allocation with mmap).
                    175: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
                    176: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
                    177: added primitives K and UNDER+.
                    178: Win32 support.
                    179: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
                    180: some bug fixes.
                    181: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
                    182: 
1.6       anton     183: 
                    184: 
1.5       anton     185: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4       anton     186: 
                    187: Bug fixes
                    188: 
1.6       anton     189: 
                    190: 
1.5       anton     191: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1       anton     192: 
1.3       anton     193: Portability and Installation:
                    194: 
1.1       anton     195: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3       anton     196: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1       anton     197: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
                    198: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
                    199: propagated by save-system.
1.3       anton     200: 
                    201: Tools:
                    202: 
                    203: Improved etags support.
                    204: more.fs allows output paging.
                    205: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
                    206: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
                    207: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
                    208: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
                    209: 
                    210: New words:
                    211: 
                    212: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
                    213: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
                    214: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
                    215: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
                    216: added POSTPONE,.
                    217: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
                    218: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
                    219: rewritten to use that mechanism.
                    220: 
                    221: Changes to existing words:
                    222: 
                    223: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1       anton     224: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
                    225: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3       anton     226: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
                    227: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1       anton     228: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3       anton     229: 
1.12      anton     230: -----
1.13      anton     231: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12      anton     232: 
                    233: This file is part of Gforth.
                    234: 
                    235: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
                    236: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
                    237: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
                    238: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
                    239: 
                    240: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
                    241: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
                    242: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
                    243: GNU General Public License for more details.
                    244: 
                    245: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
                    246: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
                    247: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
                    248: 
1.6       anton     249: 
                    250: % Local Variables:
                    251: % fill-prefix: "  "

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