Annotation of gforth/NEWS, revision 1.31

1.20      anton       1: 
                      2: 
1.29      anton       3: User-visible changes between 0.6.2 and 0.6.9 (up to 2008-07-16):
1.20      anton       4: 
1.28      anton       5: Requirements:
1.31    ! anton       6:   At run-time requires libtool and gcc (for the libcc C interface) and
        !             7:                        gdb (for the disassembler (SEE)) on some platforms.
1.20      anton       8: Installation:
                      9:   support for DESTDIR, POST_INSTALL, INSTALL_SCRIPT
1.28      anton      10:   automatic performance tuning on building (--enable-force-reg unnecessary)
                     11:   report performance and functionality problems at end of "make"
                     12:   autogen.sh now exists
                     13: License:
                     14:   Changed to GPLv3
1.20      anton      15: Bug fixes
1.22      anton      16:   Now works with address-space randomization.
1.20      anton      17:   The single-step debugger works again in some engines.
1.22      anton      18:   Many others.
1.20      anton      19: Ports:
                     20:   AMD64, ARM, IA-64 (Itanium): better performance
1.31    ! anton      21:   PPC, PPC64: disassembler and assembler
        !            22:   Gforth EC: R8C, 4stack, misc, 8086 work
1.28      anton      23:   MacOS X: better support
1.22      anton      24: Invocation:
                     25:   New flags --ignore-async-signals, --vm-commit (default overcommit)
1.28      anton      26:             --print-sequences
1.20      anton      27: Forth 200x:
1.31    ! anton      28:   X:extension-query: produce true for all implemented extensions
        !            29:   X:required REQUIRED etc. (not new)
        !            30:   X:defined: [DEFINED] and [UNDEFINED]
        !            31:   X:parse-name: PARSE-NAME (new name)
        !            32:   X:deferred: deferred words (new: DEFER@ DEFER! ACTION-OF)
1.24      anton      33:   X:structures: +FIELD FIELD: FFIELD: CFIELD: etc.
1.25      anton      34:   X:ekeys: new: EKEY>FKEY K-SHIFT-MASK K-CTRL-MASK K-ALT-MASK K-F1...K-F12
1.31    ! anton      35:   X:fp-stack (not new)
        !            36:   X:number-prefixes (partially new, see below)
1.20      anton      37: Number prefixes:
                     38:   0x is a hex prefix: 0xff and 0XfF now produces (decimal) 255
                     39:   # is a decimal prefix: #10 now produces (decimal) 10
1.24      anton      40:   Signs after the number prefix are now accepted, e.g, #-50.
1.20      anton      41:   ' now only handles a single (x)char: 'ab is no longer accepted, 
                     42:                                        'a' now produces (decimal) 97
1.31    ! anton      43: Unicode support (currently supports only uniform encoding):
        !            44:   added xchars words for dealing with variable-width multi-byte characters
        !            45:   provide 8bit (ISO Latin 1) and UTF-8 support for xchars
1.20      anton      46: New words:
1.28      anton      47:   \C C-FUNCTION C-LIBRARY END-C-LIBRARY C-LIBRARY-NAME (libcc C interface)
                     48:   LIB-ERROR (complements OPEN-LIB)
1.22      anton      49:   OUTFILE-EXECUTE INFILE-EXECUTE BASE-EXECUTE (limited change of global state)
                     50:   16-bit and 32-bit memory acces: UW@ UL@ SW@ SL@ W! L! W@ L@ /W /L
                     51:   NEXT-ARG SHIFT-ARGS (OS command-line argument processing)
                     52:   NOTHROW (for backtrace control)
1.20      anton      53:   FTRUNC FMOD (undocumented)
1.24      anton      54:   SEE-CODE SEE-CODE-RANGE (show generated dynamic native code)
1.22      anton      55: Improvements/changes of existing words:
1.25      anton      56:   S\", .\" now support \l, \m, \z, and limits hex and octal character specs.
                     57:   OPEN-FILE with W/O no longer creates or truncates files (no compat. file)
1.28      anton      58:   OPEN-LIB now understands ~ at the start, like OPEN-FILE.
1.22      anton      59:   TRY...ENDTRY changed significantly, compatibility files available (see docs).
                     60:   The disassembler (DISCODE) can now use gdb to disassemble code
                     61:   Uninitialized defered words now give a warning when executed
                     62:   Division is floored (disable with "configure --enable-force-cdiv")
                     63:   Gforth (not gforth-fast) reports division by zero and overflow on division
                     64:     on all platforms.
1.20      anton      65: Newly documented words:
                     66:   S>NUMBER? S>UNUMBER?
1.25      anton      67:   EKEY keypress names: K-LEFT  K-RIGHT K-UP K-DOWN K-HOME K-END K-PRIOR
                     68:     K-NEXT K-INSERT K-DELETE
1.20      anton      69:   CLEARSTACKS
1.22      anton      70:   FORM
1.20      anton      71: Environment variable GFORTHSYSTEMPREFIX (used by word SYSTEM and friends)
                     72: C interface:
                     73:   exported symbols now start with "gforth_" (for referencing them from C code)
1.28      anton      74:   libcc C function call interface (requires libtool and gcc at run-time)
                     75:     alternative: undocumented libffi-based interface
1.20      anton      76: Libraries:
                     77:   depth-changes.fs: report stack depth changes during interpretation
1.22      anton      78:   ans-report.fs now reports CfV extensions
1.20      anton      79:   fsl-util.4th: FSL support files (undocumented)
                     80:   regexp.fs for regular expressions (undocumented)
                     81:   complex.fs for complex numbers (undocumented)
                     82:   fft.fs for Fast Fourier Transform (undocumented)
                     83:   wf.fs, a Wiki implementation (undocumented)
                     84:   httpd.fs, a web server (undocumented)
                     85:   status.fs, show interpreter status in separate xterm (undocumented)
                     86:   profile.fs for profiling (undocumented, incomplete)
1.22      anton      87:   endtry-iferror.fs, recover-endtry.fs to ease the TRY change transition
1.24      anton      88:   test/tester.fs: Now works with FP numbers (undocumented)
                     89:   test/ttester.fs: Version of tester.fs with improved interface (T{...}T).
1.20      anton      90:  compat library:
                     91:   compat/execute-parsing.fs
                     92: Speed improvements:
1.28      anton      93:   automatic performance tuning on building
1.20      anton      94:   static stack caching (good speedup on PPC)
1.22      anton      95:   mixed-precision division is now faster
1.20      anton      96:   support for int128 types on AMD64
                     97:   workarounds for gcc performance bugs (in particular, PR 15242)
1.24      anton      98:   branch target alignment (good speedup on Alpha).
1.20      anton      99: 
                    100: 
1.18      anton     101: User-visible changes between 0.6.1 and 0.6.2:
                    102: 
1.19      anton     103: Bug fixes (in particular, gforth-0.6.2 compiles with gcc-3.3)
                    104: New words: LATEST, LATESTXT (LASTXT deprecated)
                    105: Operating environment: Added optional support for a C interface built
                    106:   on the ffcall libraries (more portable and powerful than the old
                    107:   one, but still not documented).  To use it, the ffcall libraries
                    108:   have to be installed before building Gforth (see INSTALL).
                    109: Miscellaneous: Gforth-fast now uses static superinstructions (some
                    110:   speedup on some platforms); generally this is transparent (apart
                    111:   from the speedup), but there are lots of command-line options for
                    112:   controlling the static superinstruction generation.
1.18      anton     113: 
                    114: 
1.16      anton     115: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
                    116: 
                    117: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
                    118: 
                    119: 
1.9       anton     120: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
                    121: 
1.14      anton     122: Changes in behaviour:
1.10      anton     123: 
1.14      anton     124: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
                    125: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
                    126:   the header format).
                    127: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
                    128:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
                    129:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
                    130:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
1.16      anton     131:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
                    132:   in the manual).
1.14      anton     133: 
                    134: Operating environment:
                    135: 
                    136: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
1.10      anton     137: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
                    138:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
1.15      anton     139: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
1.10      anton     140: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
1.14      anton     141: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
                    142: New image file format.
1.10      anton     143: 
1.14      anton     144: New words:
1.10      anton     145: 
1.14      anton     146: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
                    147: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
                    148: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
                    149: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
1.17      anton     150: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
1.14      anton     151: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
                    152: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
                    153: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
                    154: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
1.9       anton     155: 
1.14      anton     156: Miscellaneous:
1.9       anton     157: 
                    158: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
                    159:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
                    160:   stack and instruction stream).
1.10      anton     161: 
1.9       anton     162: 
1.8       anton     163: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
                    164: 
                    165: Changes in behaviour:
                    166: 
                    167: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
                    168:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
                    169:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
                    170:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
                    171: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
                    172:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
                    173:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
                    174: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
                    175:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
                    176:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
                    177: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
                    178:   disassembler is available).
                    179: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
                    180: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
                    181:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
                    182: 
                    183: Operating environment:
                    184: 
                    185: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
                    186: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
                    187:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
                    188:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
                    189: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
                    190:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
                    191: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
                    192:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
                    193:   through gforth -i).
                    194: 
                    195: Ports:
                    196: 
                    197: AIX.
                    198: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
                    199: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
                    200: 
                    201: New words:
                    202: 
                    203: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
                    204: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
                    205: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
                    206: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
                    207: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
                    208: Nested number output: <<# #>>
                    209: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
                    210: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
                    211: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
                    212: 
                    213: Miscellaneous:
                    214: 
                    215: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
                    216:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
                    217: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
                    218:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
                    219:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
                    220:   architectures are welcome.
                    221: 
                    222: 
1.6       anton     223: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
                    224: 
                    225: Operating environment:
                    226: 
                    227: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
                    228:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
                    229:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
                    230:   now has "." in front.
                    231: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
                    232:   command-line options).
                    233: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
                    234: Errors are now directed to stderr.
                    235: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
                    236: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
                    237: 
                    238: Ports:
                    239: 
                    240: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
                    241: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
                    242: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
                    243: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
                    244:   non-OS systems).
1.7       pazsan    245: 
                    246: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
                    247: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
                    248: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
1.6       anton     249: 
                    250: New, changed, and removed words:
                    251: 
                    252: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
                    253:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
                    254: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
                    255:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
                    256: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
                    257: Added EXCEPTION.
                    258: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
                    259: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
                    260:   changed names.
                    261: 
                    262: Miscellaneous:
                    263: 
                    264: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
                    265: Documentation improvements.
                    266: Wordlist structure changed.
                    267: Added mini-oof.
                    268: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
                    269:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
                    270:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
                    271: Bug fixes.
                    272: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
1.7       pazsan    273: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
                    274: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
                    275: (for PSC1000).
1.6       anton     276: More files in the compat library.
                    277: 
                    278: 
                    279: 
1.5       anton     280: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
                    281: 
                    282: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
                    283:        (allocation with mmap).
                    284: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
                    285: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
                    286: added primitives K and UNDER+.
                    287: Win32 support.
                    288: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
                    289: some bug fixes.
                    290: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
                    291: 
1.6       anton     292: 
                    293: 
1.5       anton     294: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
1.4       anton     295: 
                    296: Bug fixes
                    297: 
1.6       anton     298: 
                    299: 
1.5       anton     300: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
1.1       anton     301: 
1.3       anton     302: Portability and Installation:
                    303: 
1.1       anton     304: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
1.3       anton     305: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
1.1       anton     306: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
                    307: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
                    308: propagated by save-system.
1.3       anton     309: 
                    310: Tools:
                    311: 
                    312: Improved etags support.
                    313: more.fs allows output paging.
                    314: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
                    315: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
                    316: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
                    317: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
                    318: 
                    319: New words:
                    320: 
                    321: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
                    322: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
                    323: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
                    324: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
                    325: added POSTPONE,.
                    326: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
                    327: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
                    328: rewritten to use that mechanism.
                    329: 
                    330: Changes to existing words:
                    331: 
                    332: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
1.1       anton     333: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
                    334: reveals into that wordlist.
1.3       anton     335: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
                    336: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
1.1       anton     337: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
1.3       anton     338: 
1.12      anton     339: -----
1.30      anton     340: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003,2006,2007,2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1.12      anton     341: 
                    342: This file is part of Gforth.
                    343: 
                    344: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
                    345: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
1.27      anton     346: as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
1.12      anton     347: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
                    348: 
                    349: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
                    350: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
                    351: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
                    352: GNU General Public License for more details.
                    353: 
                    354: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1.27      anton     355: along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
1.12      anton     356: 
1.6       anton     357: 
                    358: % Local Variables:
                    359: % fill-prefix: "  "

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