File:  [gforth] / gforth / NEWS
Revision 1.11: download - view: text, annotated - select for diffs
Fri Feb 28 10:59:11 2003 UTC (21 years, 1 month ago) by anton
Branches: MAIN
CVS tags: HEAD
documentation changes: updated Changelog and NEWS, wrote sections on
  pipes and updated the Performance section; updated timings.sc with
  gforth-0.5.9 numbers
Changed name in bootmessage from GForth to Gforth.

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

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