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documentation update
redefined words in prims2x.fs to keep BUILD-FROM-SCRATCH working

    1: User-visible changes between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1:
    2: 
    3: Bug fixes (installation on big-endian machines sometimes did not work)
    4: 
    5: 
    6: User-visible changes between 0.5.0 and 0.6.0:
    7: 
    8: Changes in behaviour:
    9: 
   10: S": interpreted use now ALLOCATEs the string (they live until BYE).
   11: Long word names (512MB on 32-bit systems) are now supported (change to
   12:   the header format).
   13: New threaded code execution method: primitive-centric (allows the
   14:   following), hybrid direct/indirect threaded (easier portability),
   15:   with dynamic superinstructions (typical speedup on Athlon: factor
   16:   2).  New engine gforth-itc for dealing with some potential
   17:   backwards-compatibility problems (see "Direct or Indirect Threaded?"
   18:   in the manual).
   19: 
   20: Operating environment:
   21: 
   22: Default dictionary size is now 4MB.
   23: Large file support on OSs that support them (i.e., files with more
   24:   than 2GB on 32-bit machines).
   25: Gforth can now deal well with broken pipes in most situations.
   26: vi tags files can be built with tags.fs (usage like etags.fs).
   27: gforth.el mostly rewritten.
   28: New image file format.
   29: 
   30: New words:
   31: 
   32: Keyboard input: EDIT-LINE K-PRIOR K-NEXT K-DELETE
   33: File input: SLURP-FILE SLURP-FID 
   34: Programming tools: ID. .ID WORDLIST-WORDS SIMPLE-SEE
   35: Conditional execution: [DEFINED] [UNDEFINED]
   36: Defining Words: CONST-DOES> ]]
   37: Input stream: PARSE-WORD EXECUTE-PARSING EXECUTE-PARSING-FILE
   38: String comparison: STR= STR< STRING-PREFIX?
   39: String literals: S\" .\" \"-PARSE
   40: Floating point output: F.RDP F>STR-RDP F>BUF-RDP
   41: 
   42: Miscellaneous:
   43: 
   44: Generalized prims2x.fs into Vmgen (see README.vmgen etc.); used the
   45:   new capabilities in prims (e.g., automatic handling of the return
   46:   stack and instruction stream).
   47: 
   48: 
   49: User-visible changes between 0.4.0 and 0.5.0:
   50: 
   51: Changes in behaviour:
   52: 
   53: There are now two engines: the fast engine (gforth-fast) is at least
   54:   as fast as gforth in earlier releases; the debugging engine (gforth)
   55:   supports precise backtracing for signals (e.g., illegal memory
   56:   access), but is slower by a factor of 1-2.
   57: Block files now start at block 0 by default (instead of block 1).  If
   58:   you have block files around, prepend 1024 bytes to convert them, or
   59:   do a "1 OFFSET !" to establish the old behaviour.
   60: Gforth now does not translate newlines to LFs on reading.  Instead,
   61:   READ-LINE now interprets LF, CR, and CRLF as newlines.  Newlines on
   62:   output are in the OSs favourite format.
   63: SEE now disassembles primitives (or hex-DUMPs the code if no
   64:   disassembler is available).
   65: >HEAD (aka >NAME) now returns 0 (instead of the nt of ???) on failure.
   66: Syntax of prim changed: stack effects are now surrounded by
   67:   parentheses, tabs are insignificant.
   68: 
   69: Operating environment:
   70: 
   71: Gforth now produces a backtrace when catching an exception.
   72: On platforms supporting the Unix 98 SA_SIGINFO semantics, you get more
   73:   precise error reports for SIGSEGV and SIGFPE (e.g., "stack
   74:   underflow" instead of "Invalid memory address").
   75: Gforth now produces exit code 1 if there is an error (i.e., an
   76:   uncaught THROW) in batch processing.
   77: You can use "gforthmi --application ..." to build an image that
   78:   processes the whole command-line when invoked directly (instead of
   79:   through gforth -i).
   80: 
   81: Ports:
   82: 
   83: AIX.
   84: 20% speedup on 604e under powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu,
   85: 19%-29% speedup on Celeron with gcc-2.95.
   86: 
   87: New words:
   88: 
   89: Missing ANS Forth words: EKEY EKEY? EKEY>CHAR
   90: Timing words: CPUTIME UTIME
   91: Vector arithmetic: V* FAXPY
   92: FP comparison: F~ABS F~REL
   93: Deferred words: <IS> [IS]
   94: Nested number output: <<# #>>
   95: Exception handling: TRY RECOVER ENDTRY
   96: Directory handling: OPEN-DIR READ-DIR CLOSE-DIR FILENAME-MATCH
   97: Other: ]L PUSH-ORDER
   98: 
   99: Miscellaneous:
  100: 
  101: Significant extensions to the manual (added an introduction, among
  102:   other things), many of them due to a new team member: Neal Crook.
  103: Added assemblers and disassemblers for 386, Alpha, MIPS (thanks to
  104:   contributions by Andrew McKewan, Bernd Thallner, and Christian
  105:   Pirker).  Contributions of assemblers and disassemblers for other
  106:   architectures are welcome.
  107: 
  108: 
  109: User-visible changes between 0.3.0 and 0.4.0:
  110: 
  111: Operating environment:
  112: 
  113: Path handling: "." at the start of the path represents the directory
  114:   the nearest enclosing file resides in (if there is none: the working
  115:   directory). "~+" indicates the working directory.  The default path
  116:   now has "." in front.
  117: gforth and gforthmi is now more GNU standards compliant (wrt
  118:   command-line options).
  119: New command-line-option: --die-on-signal
  120: Errors are now directed to stderr.
  121: Stdout is now unbuffered, if it is a tty.
  122: User input device redirection (for filters) is now possible.
  123: 
  124: Ports:
  125: 
  126: Now runs on IRIX (and other MIPS-based systems without linker-flag -d).
  127: Direct threading now works on PowerPC (20% speedup on 604e).
  128: Better support for m68k (thanks to Andreas Schwab and Jorge Acereda).
  129: It is possible to create executables that contain the image (for
  130:   non-OS systems).
  131: 
  132: Added a lot of embedded control (EC) stuff. Supported controllers and
  133: small CPUs are Siemens C16x, 8086, 6502, Mixed-Mode's FPGA MISC, Bernd Paysan's
  134: 4stack processor. Not finished: ShBoom alias PSC1000, H8, AVR.
  135: 
  136: New, changed, and removed words:
  137: 
  138: Renamed F0 to FP0 (avoids unexpected behaviour in hex), added aliases
  139:   SP0, RP0, LP0 (recommended for future use) for S0, R0, L0.
  140: Renamed PARSE-WORD into SWORD (PARSE-WORD is used with the meaning of
  141:   NAME in OpenBoot and dpans6 A.6.2.2008)
  142: Added FPICK (suggested by Julian Noble).
  143: Added EXCEPTION.
  144: S" gforth" ENVIRONMENT? now produces the version-string.
  145: Changed representation of types in struct package, and correspondingly
  146:   changed names.
  147: 
  148: Miscellaneous:
  149: 
  150: Plain text documentation is now available in doc/gforth.txt.
  151: Documentation improvements.
  152: Wordlist structure changed.
  153: Added mini-oof.
  154: Reorganized files: added directories and reorganized many files into
  155:   them; renamed files into 8.3 format to work with completely broken
  156:   systems (but there are again some files that won't work there).
  157: Bug fixes.
  158: Various changes without log information only known as mega-patches.
  159: Cross compiler now also supports compilation only for undefined or forward
  160: referenced words. Plugins to support some native code generation
  161: (for PSC1000).
  162: More files in the compat library.
  163: 
  164: 
  165: 
  166: User-visible changes between 0.2.1 and 0.3.0:
  167: 
  168: Stack overflow detection by memory protection on most systems
  169: 	(allocation with mmap).
  170: gforth.fi is now fully relocatable.
  171: fully relocatable images are now easier to create.
  172: added primitives K and UNDER+.
  173: Win32 support.
  174: Improved support for embedded controllers and other deprived environments.
  175: some bug fixes.
  176: added concept index; other documentation improvements.
  177: 
  178: 
  179: 
  180: User-visible changes between 0.2.0 and 0.2.1:
  181: 
  182: Bug fixes
  183: 
  184: 
  185: 
  186: User-visible changes between 0.1beta and 0.2.0:
  187: 
  188: Portability and Installation:
  189: 
  190: Support architectures with buggy long longs (alpha-dec-osf).
  191: Better support for DOS and other non-Unix systems.
  192: Size changes through the command line are passed to the image (and
  193: saved with savesystem); the preamble specifies an interpreter and is
  194: propagated by save-system.
  195: 
  196: Tools:
  197: 
  198: Improved etags support.
  199: more.fs allows output paging.
  200: Added compat/ directory containing ANS implementations of Gforth features.
  201: Added tiny multitasker (tasker.fs).
  202: Added two alternatives for object-oriented programming: oof.fs, objects.fs.
  203: Added ans-report.fs (reports which words are used from which wordset).
  204: 
  205: New words:
  206: 
  207: Changed POPEN and PCLOSE to OPEN-PIPE and CLOSE-PIPE.
  208: Added FORM, ROWS, and COLS.
  209: added primitives EMIT-FILE, STDOUT, STDERR.
  210: Added TABLEs (case-sensitive wordlists).
  211: added POSTPONE,.
  212: Added the ability to combine arbitrary interpretation and compilation
  213: semantics (INTERPRET/COMPILE:); state-smart words were generally
  214: rewritten to use that mechanism.
  215: 
  216: Changes to existing words:
  217: 
  218: EMIT and TYPE now work through file words (and are redirectable).
  219: HEADER now stores the compilation wordlist in the header and REVEAL
  220: reveals into that wordlist.
  221: changed behaviour of SYSTEM (no longer returns wretval, but puts it in
  222: $?)  added (SYSTEM) ( c_addr u -- wretval wior ).
  223: ' and ['] now give an error for compile-only words.
  224: 
  225: -----
  226: Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,2000,2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  227: 
  228: This file is part of Gforth.
  229: 
  230: Gforth is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  231: modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
  232: as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
  233: of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  234: 
  235: This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  236: but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  237: MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.#See the
  238: GNU General Public License for more details.
  239: 
  240: You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  241: along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  242: Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
  243: 
  244: 
  245: % Local Variables:
  246: % fill-prefix: "  "