Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.21

1.20      anton       1: 
                      2: 
                      3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2006-05-07):
                      4: 
                      5: Installation:
                      6:   support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
                      7:   report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"  
                      8: Bug fixes
                      9:   Among others: now works with address-space randomization.
                     10:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
                     11: Ports:
                     12:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
                     13:   Gforth EC: R8C port
                     14: Forth 200x:
                     15:   extension queries (produce true for all implemented extensions)
                     16:   REQUIRED etc. (not new)
                     17:   [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
                     18:   PARSE-NAME (new name)
                     19:   deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
                     20: Unicode support (incomplete):
                     21:   added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
                     22:   provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
                     23: Number prefixes:
                     24:   0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
                     25:   # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
                     26:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
                     27:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
                     28: The disassembler (DISCODE, SEE <primitive>) can now use gdb to disassemble code
                     29: Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
                     30: New words:
                     31:   16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SK@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
                     32:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
                     33:   NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
                     34: Newly documented words:
                     35:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
                     36:   EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
                     37:     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
                     38:     S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
                     39:   CLEARSTACKS
                     40: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
                     41: C interface:
                     42:   exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
                     43:   support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) and
                     44:   a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
                     45: Libraries:
                     46:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
                     47:   fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
                     48:   regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
                     49:   complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
                     50:   fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
                     51:   wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
                     52:   httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
                     53:   status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
                     54:   profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
                     55:  compat library:
                     56:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
                     57: Speed improvements:
                     58:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
                     59:   fast mixed-precision division words on i386 and AMD64
                     60:   support for int128 types on AMD64
                     61:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
                     62: 
                     63: 
1.18      anton      64: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
                     65: 
1.19      anton      66: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
                     67: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
                     68: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
                     69:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
                     70:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
                     71:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
                     72: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
                     73:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
                     74:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
                     75:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
1.18      anton      76: 
                     77: 
1.16      anton      78: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
                     79: 
                     80: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
                     81: 
                     82: 
1.9       anton      83: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
                     84: 
1.14      anton      85: Changes in behaviour:
1.10      anton      86: 
1.14      anton      87: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
                     88: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
                     89:   the header format).
                     90: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
                     91:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
                     92:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
                     93:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16      anton      94:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
                     95:   in the manual).
1.14      anton      96: 
                     97: Operating environment:
                     98: 
                     99: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10      anton     100: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
                    101:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15      anton     102: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10      anton     103: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14      anton     104: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
                    105: New image file format.
1.10      anton     106: 
1.14      anton     107: New words:
1.10      anton     108: 
1.14      anton     109: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
                    110: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
                    111: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
                    112: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
1.17      anton     113: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14      anton     114: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
                    115: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
                    116: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
                    117: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9       anton     118: 
1.14      anton     119: Miscellaneous:
1.9       anton     120: 
                    121: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
                    122:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
                    123:   stack and instruction stream).
1.10      anton     124: 
1.9       anton     125: 
1.8       anton     126: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
                    127: 
                    128: Changes in behaviour:
                    129: 
                    130: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
                    131:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
                    132:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
                    133:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
                    134: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
                    135:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
                    136:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
                    137: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
                    138:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
                    139:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
                    140: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
                    141:   disassembler is available).
                    142: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
                    143: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
                    144:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
                    145: 
                    146: Operating environment:
                    147: 
                    148: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
                    149: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
                    150:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
                    151:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
                    152: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
                    153:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
                    154: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
                    155:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
                    156:   through gforth -i).
                    157: 
                    158: Ports:
                    159: 
                    160: AIX.
                    161: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
                    162: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
                    163: 
                    164: New words:
                    165: 
                    166: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
                    167: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
                    168: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
                    169: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
                    170: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
                    171: Nested number output: <<# #>>
                    172: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
                    173: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
                    174: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
                    175: 
                    176: Miscellaneous:
                    177: 
                    178: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
                    179:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
                    180: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
                    181:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
                    182:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
                    183:   architectures are welcome.
                    184: 
                    185: 
1.6       anton     186: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
                    187: 
                    188: Operating environment:
                    189: 
                    190: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
                    191:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
                    192:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
                    193:   now has "." in front.
                    194: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
                    195:   command-line options).
                    196: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
                    197: Errors are now directed to stderr.
                    198: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
                    199: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
                    200: 
                    201: Ports:
                    202: 
                    203: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
                    204: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
                    205: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
                    206: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
                    207:   non-OS systems).
1.7       pazsan    208: 
                    209: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
                    210: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
                    211: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6       anton     212: 
                    213: New, changed, and removed words:
                    214: 
                    215: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
                    216:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
                    217: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
                    218:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
                    219: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
                    220: Added EXCEPTION.
                    221: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
                    222: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
                    223:   changed names.
                    224: 
                    225: Miscellaneous:
                    226: 
                    227: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
                    228: Documentation improvements.
                    229: Wordlist structure changed.
                    230: Added mini-oof.
                    231: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
                    232:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
                    233:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
                    234: Bug fixes.
                    235: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7       pazsan    236: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
                    237: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
                    238: (for PSC1000).
1.6       anton     239: More files in the compat library.
                    240: 
                    241: 
                    242: 
1.5       anton     243: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
                    244: 
                    245: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
                    246:        (allocation with mmap).
                    247: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
                    248: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
                    249: added primitives K and UNDER+.
                    250: Win32 support.
                    251: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
                    252: some bug fixes.
                    253: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
                    254: 
1.6       anton     255: 
                    256: 
1.5       anton     257: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4       anton     258: 
                    259: Bug fixes
                    260: 
1.6       anton     261: 
                    262: 
1.5       anton     263: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1       anton     264: 
1.3       anton     265: Portability and Installation:
                    266: 
1.1       anton     267: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3       anton     268: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1       anton     269: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
                    270: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
                    271: propagated by save-system.
1.3       anton     272: 
                    273: Tools:
                    274: 
                    275: Improved etags support.
                    276: more.fs allows output paging.
                    277: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
                    278: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
                    279: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
                    280: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
                    281: 
                    282: New words:
                    283: 
                    284: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
                    285: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
                    286: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
                    287: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
                    288: added POSTPONE,.
                    289: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
                    290: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
                    291: rewritten to use that mechanism.
                    292: 
                    293: Changes to existing words:
                    294: 
                    295: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1       anton     296: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
                    297: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3       anton     298: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
                    299: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1       anton     300: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3       anton     301: 
1.12      anton     302: -----
1.21    ! anton     303: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12      anton     304: 
                    305: This file is part of Gforth.
                    306: 
                    307: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
                    308: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
                    309: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
                    310: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
                    311: 
                    312: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
                    313: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
                    314: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
                    315: GNU General Public License for more details.
                    316: 
                    317: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
                    318: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
                    319: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
                    320: 
1.6       anton     321: 
                    322: % Local Variables:
                    323: % fill-prefix: "  "

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