VFX Forth changes and release notes

25 April 2005

All versions of VFX Forth for Windows are updated several times each year. View or download the full VFX Forth release notes for a detailed description of all the changes.

Upgrade to v3.70

Registered users of VFX Forth v3.x can upgrade to v3.70 for:
GBP 75, ~US$ 135, ~Euro 120
Contact the MPE office to order your upgrade.

Free evaluation version

The evaluation version of VFX Forth for Windows v3.70 is available for free download from here. No missing features, no time-out, just a polite "nag" screen and no turnkey application generation or kernel sources. PDF and HTML manuals are included.

What was new in VFX Forth v3.62

VFX Forth 3.62 features improved compilation speed, more example code, and a new GUI interface coding system. On a 750,000 lines of code application, compilation speed improved by a factor of over 6:1 compared with v3.60.

VFX Forth 3.60 onwards can generate DLLs which are usable from any programming language system. Unlike other Forths, there are no speed penalties or programming restrictions for DLL generation.

The PowerNet Echo, Telnet and Web servers have been ported to VFX Forth and are shipped with the Professional and Mission versions. These are multi-threaded servers. The Web server supports CGI and ASP, with Forth being used as the scripting language. The PowerNet shipped with VFX Forth is an enhancement of the code from the embedded verion, so see PowerNet for more details of PowerNet

Added "bouncing ball" mode to DFX debugger, which shows the source code of the words being debugged, with the display being updated as source token is reached. This mode requires the code being debugged to have been compiled with XREFs.

Added CDKEY folder providing a framework for generating application install keys. This also demonstrates some interesting Windows techniques.

Added GUIGEN folder providing a more Forth-like framework for building GUI interfaces with less dependence on Microsoft tools and documentation.

Added Pentium 3/4 specific optimisations. Initial results show that performance on a P4 is improved by a factor of 2.3 on BENCHMRK.FTH.

What was new in VFX Forth v3.60

VFX Forth Standard edition keeps its lower price and kernel sources! Go to the pricelist for price information.

VFX Forth 3.60 can generate DLLs which are usable from any programming language system. Unlike other Forths, there are speed penalties or programming restrictions for DLL generation.

The PowerNet Echo, Telnet and Web servers have been ported to VFX Forth and are shipped with the Professional and Mission versions. These are multi-threaded servers. The Web server supports CGI and ASP, with Forth being used as the scripting language.

Added Pentium 3/4 specific optimisations. Initial results show that performance on a P4 is improved by a factor of 2.3 on BENCHMRK.FTH.

There is a new Winsock interface in the Generic I/O library which provides a high level Winsock interface, as well as the Generic I/I interface itself, which underpins the PowerNet web server.

There are enhancements to the multitasker, improved exception trapping for tasks, and (of course) detail improvements to the VFX code generator.

What was new in version 3.50

New Turnkey mechanism. VFX Forth's SAVE mechanism now produces GUI or Console mode EXE files in one step, eliminating the previous two-stage process. EXE file generation is faster, more secure, and eliminates the possibility of orphan files.

New access mechanism for C++ DLLs. The EXTERN: directive has been extended to access methods/functions in DLLs written in C++. Source code is provided for the support mechanism for VC++ so that you can extend it to incompatible compilers or other object oriented languages.

More examples including a State Machine compiler and a PID (three term) controller for real time applications.

The VFX code generator has many detail improvements again, leading to rock solid code that has been tested on applications of up to 1,000,000 lines of Forth source code! With five years of field use, the VFX code generator retains its position as generating the fastest Forth code by a wide margin.

Internationalisation support. VFX Forth allows text to be translated and displayed in multiple languages. The code is based on the draft ANS Forth internationalisation standard available from this web site. Go there.

Enhanced user interface features in the Studio environment, including a debug console on a separate thread.

Enhanced DFX debugger. Go there.

Enhanced multitasker, which is easier to use within Winprocs and callbacks. The details are in the release notes.

New Terminal generic I/O device. The TTY style terminal device has been rewritten for speed and ease of extension.

Enhanced Windows HELPERS library. This library file contains many useful factors which are common for Windows programming and is updated with every release.

Enhanced fault location in resource script compiler and BNF parser generator.

Enhanced Floating Point. The three floating point libraries have been updated and retested after much discussion about the ANS Forth standard on the comp.lang.forth newsgroup, and the v3.5 versions match the group consensus. This also improves compatibility with the Forth Scientific Library (included).

Updated and enhanced documentation. MPE's DOCGEN system is used to produce all the VFX Forth documentation and we have incorporated comments and suggestions from many users as well as improved much of the documentation.

What was new in version 3.40

MPE's VFX Forth for Windows v3.40 release provided many additional features for both new and experienced Windows programmers.

Faster compilation

VFX Forth's code generator has now itself been fully optimised, leading to a significant improvement in compilation speed.

Internationalisation support

Support for fully internationalised applications is provided. Error messages and text can be defined so that text can be exported, translated and re-imported at run time. Simple hooks allow you to generate text files in the development language. These files can be translated outside the VFX Forth environment. The translated text does not need to use the same font or character size, and when the new file is loaded by selecting country and language, the new text will be used.

In conjunction with VFX Forth's powerful text macro substitution features, output formats such as date, time, and number formatting are completely under your control.

User programmable Studio IDE

Studio IDE

The updated Developer Studio IDE is provided as full source code, and includes features such as the dictionary browser which allows you to find, decompile, and locate the source code of any word in your application, or even in the ProForth kernel. The Studio IDE provides user definable hooks to any text editor for editing or source location. You can add your own extensions to the Studio IDE for improved productivity.

DFX debugger

Provided with the Studio IDE is the DFX debugger, featuring single stepping, tracing, instruction logging and watchpoints at the assembler or Forth source code levels. Like the rest of the Studio IDE, DFX is provided as source code.

Enhancements

More optimisations and optimiser control. We've been all over the code generator again and added some new code generators and improved others. The source inliner has been overhauled to reduce the number of special cases in which it has to be disabled.

Upgraded floating point in three versions, external stack, NDP stack, or 32 bit floats on the data stack optimised for use with OpenGL.

EXTERN defined API imports can now have optional parameter names in their argument definitions, for example:
extern int PASCAL MessageBox(
  HWND hWnd,
  LPCTSTR text,
  LPCTSTR title,
  int mbType );
is Forth source code for the MessageBox API call.

DOCGEN enhanced with more active tag types. DOCGEN can now be extended by you to generate code for different formats.

Module exports can now be optimised.

Automatic generation of IDs for resources.

Exit chain for automatic deallocation of resources and user-defined shut-down.

Additional LOAD_PATH and LIBRARYDIR system text macros for even easier source code management.

User extensible MARKER and FORGET chains.

Overlay manager supports dynamic loading and removal of overlays.

Direct Port IO library and suitable NT Driver for direct access code that can run under W95/98/2000 without change. The driver is freely distributable.

More examples.

Enhanced documentation for generic I/O devices. Enhanced Richedit control access with more features, command line editing and history, text search facility and a user definable double click action.