Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.24

1.20      anton       1: 
                      2: 
1.24    ! anton       3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2007-09-12):
1.20      anton       4: 
                      5: Installation:
                      6:   support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
                      7:   report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"  
                      8: Bug fixes
1.22      anton       9:   Now works with address-space randomization.
1.20      anton      10:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
1.22      anton      11:   Many others.
1.20      anton      12: Ports:
                     13:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
1.22      anton      14:   PPC: disassembler and assembler (32-bit)
                     15:   Gforth EC: R8C, Lego NXT (complete?)
                     16: Invocation:
                     17:   New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit)
1.20      anton      18: Forth 200x:
                     19:   extension queries (produce true for all implemented extensions)
                     20:   REQUIRED etc. (not new)
                     21:   [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
                     22:   PARSE-NAME (new name)
                     23:   deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
1.24    ! anton      24:   X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
        !            25:   X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK
1.23      anton      26: Unicode support (incomplete, documentation probably not up-to-date):
1.20      anton      27:   added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
                     28:   provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
                     29: Number prefixes:
                     30:   0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
                     31:   # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
1.24    ! anton      32:   Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
1.20      anton      33:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
                     34:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
                     35: New words:
1.22      anton      36:   \C C-FUNCTION (C interface)
                     37:   OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
                     38:   16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
                     39:   NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
                     40:   NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
1.20      anton      41:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
1.24    ! anton      42:   SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
1.22      anton      43: Improvements/changes of existing words:
1.24    ! anton      44:   S\" now supports \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs.
        !            45:   OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (compat file missing)
1.22      anton      46:   TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
                     47:   The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
                     48:   Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
                     49:   Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
                     50:   Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
                     51:     on all platforms.
1.20      anton      52: Newly documented words:
                     53:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
                     54:   EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
                     55:     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9 K10 K11 K12
                     56:     S-K1 S-K2 S-K3 S-K4 S-K5 S-K6 S-K7 S-K8 S-K9 S-K10 S-K11 S-K12
                     57:   CLEARSTACKS
1.22      anton      58:   FORM
1.20      anton      59: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
                     60: C interface:
                     61:   exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
1.24    ! anton      62:   support for use of libffi (supplied with gcc) (undocumented) and
1.20      anton      63:   a C-compiler-based approach (requires C compiler at run-time) (incomplete).
                     64: Libraries:
                     65:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
1.22      anton      66:   ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
1.20      anton      67:   fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
                     68:   regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
                     69:   complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
                     70:   fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
                     71:   wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
                     72:   httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
                     73:   status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
                     74:   profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
1.22      anton      75:   endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
1.24    ! anton      76:   test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
        !            77:   test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
1.20      anton      78:  compat library:
                     79:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
                     80: Speed improvements:
                     81:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
1.22      anton      82:   mixed-precision division is now faster
1.20      anton      83:   support for int128 types on AMD64
                     84:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
1.24    ! anton      85:   branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
1.20      anton      86: 
                     87: 
1.18      anton      88: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
                     89: 
1.19      anton      90: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
                     91: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
                     92: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
                     93:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
                     94:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
                     95:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
                     96: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
                     97:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
                     98:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
                     99:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
1.18      anton     100: 
                    101: 
1.16      anton     102: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
                    103: 
                    104: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
                    105: 
                    106: 
1.9       anton     107: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
                    108: 
1.14      anton     109: Changes in behaviour:
1.10      anton     110: 
1.14      anton     111: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
                    112: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
                    113:   the header format).
                    114: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
                    115:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
                    116:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
                    117:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16      anton     118:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
                    119:   in the manual).
1.14      anton     120: 
                    121: Operating environment:
                    122: 
                    123: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10      anton     124: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
                    125:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15      anton     126: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10      anton     127: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14      anton     128: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
                    129: New image file format.
1.10      anton     130: 
1.14      anton     131: New words:
1.10      anton     132: 
1.14      anton     133: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
                    134: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
                    135: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
                    136: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
1.17      anton     137: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14      anton     138: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
                    139: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
                    140: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
                    141: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9       anton     142: 
1.14      anton     143: Miscellaneous:
1.9       anton     144: 
                    145: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
                    146:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
                    147:   stack and instruction stream).
1.10      anton     148: 
1.9       anton     149: 
1.8       anton     150: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
                    151: 
                    152: Changes in behaviour:
                    153: 
                    154: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
                    155:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
                    156:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
                    157:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
                    158: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
                    159:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
                    160:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
                    161: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
                    162:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
                    163:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
                    164: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
                    165:   disassembler is available).
                    166: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
                    167: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
                    168:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
                    169: 
                    170: Operating environment:
                    171: 
                    172: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
                    173: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
                    174:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
                    175:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
                    176: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
                    177:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
                    178: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
                    179:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
                    180:   through gforth -i).
                    181: 
                    182: Ports:
                    183: 
                    184: AIX.
                    185: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
                    186: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
                    187: 
                    188: New words:
                    189: 
                    190: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
                    191: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
                    192: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
                    193: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
                    194: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
                    195: Nested number output: <<# #>>
                    196: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
                    197: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
                    198: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
                    199: 
                    200: Miscellaneous:
                    201: 
                    202: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
                    203:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
                    204: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
                    205:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
                    206:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
                    207:   architectures are welcome.
                    208: 
                    209: 
1.6       anton     210: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
                    211: 
                    212: Operating environment:
                    213: 
                    214: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
                    215:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
                    216:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
                    217:   now has "." in front.
                    218: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
                    219:   command-line options).
                    220: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
                    221: Errors are now directed to stderr.
                    222: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
                    223: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
                    224: 
                    225: Ports:
                    226: 
                    227: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
                    228: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
                    229: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
                    230: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
                    231:   non-OS systems).
1.7       pazsan    232: 
                    233: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
                    234: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
                    235: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6       anton     236: 
                    237: New, changed, and removed words:
                    238: 
                    239: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
                    240:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
                    241: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
                    242:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
                    243: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
                    244: Added EXCEPTION.
                    245: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
                    246: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
                    247:   changed names.
                    248: 
                    249: Miscellaneous:
                    250: 
                    251: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
                    252: Documentation improvements.
                    253: Wordlist structure changed.
                    254: Added mini-oof.
                    255: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
                    256:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
                    257:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
                    258: Bug fixes.
                    259: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7       pazsan    260: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
                    261: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
                    262: (for PSC1000).
1.6       anton     263: More files in the compat library.
                    264: 
                    265: 
                    266: 
1.5       anton     267: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
                    268: 
                    269: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
                    270:        (allocation with mmap).
                    271: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
                    272: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
                    273: added primitives K and UNDER+.
                    274: Win32 support.
                    275: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
                    276: some bug fixes.
                    277: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
                    278: 
1.6       anton     279: 
                    280: 
1.5       anton     281: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4       anton     282: 
                    283: Bug fixes
                    284: 
1.6       anton     285: 
                    286: 
1.5       anton     287: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1       anton     288: 
1.3       anton     289: Portability and Installation:
                    290: 
1.1       anton     291: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3       anton     292: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1       anton     293: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
                    294: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
                    295: propagated by save-system.
1.3       anton     296: 
                    297: Tools:
                    298: 
                    299: Improved etags support.
                    300: more.fs allows output paging.
                    301: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
                    302: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
                    303: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
                    304: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
                    305: 
                    306: New words:
                    307: 
                    308: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
                    309: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
                    310: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
                    311: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
                    312: added POSTPONE,.
                    313: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
                    314: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
                    315: rewritten to use that mechanism.
                    316: 
                    317: Changes to existing words:
                    318: 
                    319: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1       anton     320: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
                    321: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3       anton     322: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
                    323: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1       anton     324: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3       anton     325: 
1.12      anton     326: -----
1.21      anton     327: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12      anton     328: 
                    329: This file is part of Gforth.
                    330: 
                    331: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
                    332: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
                    333: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
                    334: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
                    335: 
                    336: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
                    337: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
                    338: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
                    339: GNU General Public License for more details.
                    340: 
                    341: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
                    342: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
                    343: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
                    344: 
1.6       anton     345: 
                    346: % Local Variables:
                    347: % fill-prefix: "  "

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