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Documentation changes (new: The Input Stream (gforth), Stack growth
direction (Vmgen)

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