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updated version number
documentation changes
minor changes

    1: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
    2: 
    3: Changes in behaviour:
    4: 
    5: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
    6: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
    7:   the header format).
    8: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
    9:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
   10:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
   11:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
   12:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Invoking Gforth" in the
   13:   manual).
   14: 
   15: Operating environment:
   16: 
   17: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
   18: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
   19:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
   20: Gforth can now deal with well with broken pipes in most situations.
   21: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
   22: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
   23: New image file format.
   24: 
   25: New words:
   26: 
   27: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
   28: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
   29: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
   30: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
   31: Defining Words: CONST-DOES>
   32: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
   33: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
   34: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
   35: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
   36: 
   37: Miscellaneous:
   38: 
   39: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
   40:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
   41:   stack and instruction stream).
   42: 
   43: 
   44: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
   45: 
   46: Changes in behaviour:
   47: 
   48: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
   49:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
   50:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
   51:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
   52: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
   53:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
   54:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
   55: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
   56:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
   57:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
   58: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
   59:   disassembler is available).
   60: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
   61: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
   62:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
   63: 
   64: Operating environment:
   65: 
   66: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
   67: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
   68:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
   69:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
   70: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
   71:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
   72: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
   73:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
   74:   through gforth -i).
   75: 
   76: Ports:
   77: 
   78: AIX.
   79: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
   80: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
   81: 
   82: New words:
   83: 
   84: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
   85: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
   86: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
   87: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
   88: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
   89: Nested number output: <<# #>>
   90: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
   91: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
   92: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
   93: 
   94: Miscellaneous:
   95: 
   96: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
   97:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
   98: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
   99:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  100:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  101:   architectures are welcome.
  102: 
  103: 
  104: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  105: 
  106: Operating environment:
  107: 
  108: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  109:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  110:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  111:   now has "." in front.
  112: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  113:   command-line options).
  114: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  115: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  116: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  117: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  118: 
  119: Ports:
  120: 
  121: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  122: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  123: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  124: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  125:   non-OS systems).
  126: 
  127: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  128: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  129: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  130: 
  131: New, changed, and removed words:
  132: 
  133: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  134:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  135: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  136:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  137: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  138: Added EXCEPTION.
  139: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  140: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  141:   changed names.
  142: 
  143: Miscellaneous:
  144: 
  145: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  146: Documentation improvements.
  147: Wordlist structure changed.
  148: Added mini-oof.
  149: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  150:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  151:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  152: Bug fixes.
  153: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  154: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  155: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  156: (for PSC1000).
  157: More files in the compat library.
  158: 
  159: 
  160: 
  161: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  162: 
  163: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  164: 	(allocation with mmap).
  165: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  166: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  167: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  168: Win32 support.
  169: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  170: some bug fixes.
  171: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  172: 
  173: 
  174: 
  175: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  176: 
  177: Bug fixes
  178: 
  179: 
  180: 
  181: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  182: 
  183: Portability and Installation:
  184: 
  185: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  186: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  187: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  188: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  189: propagated by save-system.
  190: 
  191: Tools:
  192: 
  193: Improved etags support.
  194: more.fs allows output paging.
  195: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  196: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  197: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  198: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  199: 
  200: New words:
  201: 
  202: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  203: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  204: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  205: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  206: added POSTPONE,.
  207: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  208: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  209: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  210: 
  211: Changes to existing words:
  212: 
  213: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  214: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  215: reveals into that wordlist.
  216: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  217: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  218: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  219: 
  220: -----
  221: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  222: 
  223: This file is part of Gforth.
  224: 
  225: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  226: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  227: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  228: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  229: 
  230: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  231: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  232: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  233: GNU General Public License for more details.
  234: 
  235: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  236: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  237: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  238: 
  239: 
  240: % Local Variables:
  241: % fill-prefix: "  "