Factor 0.80:

• New help system, browsable in the UI and via the HTTP server (/responder/help). In the UI listener, invoke handbook to read the documentation root, and invoke \ foo help to look at documentation for the word foo.
• Sequences:
  • Association list words assoc*, set-assoc, acons and remove-assoc are gone.
  • The repeated virtual sequence type is gone. Instead, the <array> word takes an initial element in addition to an initial size.
  • The fill word to create a new string with an initial character repeated a certain number of times has been renamed to <string>.
  • Add a new interleave ( seq quot between -- ) combinator that applies a quotation to each element of a sequence, calling another quotation in between each pair.
  • Add a new <=> ( obj1 obj2 -- n ) word for comparing two objects using an intrinsic order. For numbers this is the standard order, for strings this is lexicographic order, and for words, this compares word names.
  • The natural-sort ( seq -- seq ) word replaces number-sort, string-sort and word-sort.
• Hashtables:
  • hash* ( key hash -- [[ key value ]] ) is now hash* ( key hash -- value ? )
  • hash-clear is now clear-hash
  • hash-each, hash-each-with, hash-all?, hash-all-with?, hash-subset, hash-subset-with now pass the key and value separately on the stack to the given quotation, instead of passing a cons cell
  • Literal syntax change: H{ [[ key value ]] ... } is now H{ { key value } }
• Math:
  • The sum and product words have been moved to contrib/math/.
  • The mod word is now supported for ratios and floating point numbers.
  • The truncate, floor and ceiling words are now supported for floating point numbers.
  • The NaN, positive infinity and negative infinity floating point numbers now parse and unparse as 0.0/0.0, 1.0/0.0, and -1.0/0.0 respectively.
  • The NaN value is now equal to itself under =.
  • Negative and postive zero are no longer equal under =. However, the new zero? word tests if the top of the stack is a zero, and it tests for both positive and negative zero.
• Streams:
  • stream-format ( string style stream -- ) now takes a hashtable rather than an association list for specifying style information.
  • stream-write and stream-terpri are now generic words, and there is a new with-nested-stream generic word. You can wrap your output streams in a <plain-writer> to avoid implementing these.
• C library interface:
  • Some alien word changes:

    <foo> ==> "foo" <c-object>
    <foo-array> ==> "foo" <c-array>

  • Support for binding to Objective C libraries is now included.
    • Normal usage of Objective C classes and methods is done using the OBJC-CLASS: and OBJC-MESSAGE: parsing words. See the example in examples/cocoa-speech.factor.
    • Objective C runtime introspection functions and structures are defined in the objective-c vocabulary.
  • Added a pair of words for between Factor strings and C strings, alien>string and string>alien.
  • Compiler changes:
    • AMD64 compiler backend.
    • Fixed some problems with compilation of inlined recursive words.
  • UI changes:
    • Fixed invalid OpenGL calls which caused problems on Windows machines with ATI drivers, and Linux machines with the MesaGL implementation.
    • The listener looks different now. An expandable top area is used for browsing objects, words and help, and the stack display has been shrunk to a single status line at the bottom of the window.
    • A left click on a presentation now invokes the default command. A right click shows a menu of possibilities.
  • Bootstrap changes:
    • Source files are no longer loaded in the stage-2 bootstrap. Since stage-2 bootstrap runs in the interpreter, this reduces bootstrap time by a few minutes. Instead, all source files, including the compiler backend, are loaded in stage-1 bootstrap, and thus boot images are now CPU-specific. Boot images can be created as follows:

      USE: image
      "x86" make-image
      "ppc" make-image
      "amd64" make-image
      

  • Contributed libraries:
    • All libraries in contrib/ have been tested and updated for recent language changes, and you can run contrib/load.factor to load all of them at once (Trent Buck)
    • Updated contrib/x11/ with many more examples (Eduardo Cavazos)
    • Added splay tree library in contrib/splay-trees.factor (Mackenzie Straight)
    • Improved AJAX support in contrib/httpd/. The "prototype" JavaScript library is now included (Chris Double)

  Factor 0.79:

  • Incompatible changes:
    • The ifte combinator has been renamed to if.
    • Syntax changes:

      { 1 2 3 }                ! arrays
      V{ 1 2 3 }               ! vectors
      H{ [[ key value ]] ... } ! hashtables
      C{ 1.02 -7.44 }          ! complex numbers
      T{ class slots ... }     ! tuple
      

  • Compiler:
    • New basic block optimizer performs more aggressive dead load and store elimination.
    • Stack shuffles are compiled more efficiently.
    • Pushing literals on either side of a stack shuffle is now compiled more efficiently.
    • Fixed a problem with relocation of compiled code on PowerPC.
    • Fixed various FFI issues on Mac OS X.
  • User interface:
    • Graphics rendering is now done using OpenGL and text rendering is done via FreeType. SDL_gfx and SDL_ttf libraries are no longer required.
    • Added expandable outliners. Used by the inspector, .s, usage., uses., vocabs., and various other words.
    • Added word completion to the listener pane; press TAB.
    • Added word navigation shortcuts to the listener pane; press C+LEFT and C+RIGHT to move a word at a time, and C+BACKSPACE and C+DELETE to delete the previous and next word, respectively.
    • Added mouse-over help for presentations.
    • Previously-entered output is now clickable in the listener.
    • New, better-looking widget theme.
  • Collections:
    • Faster map, 2each and 2map.
    • Arrays are now better supported and should be used instead of vectors where resizing is not desired.
    • Some new sequence words that do not bounds check: nth-unsafe and set-nth-unsafe. These should only be used in special circumstances, such as inner loops (each, map and so on use them).
    • New replace-slice ( new from to seq -- seq ) word replaces a slice of a sequence with another sequence.
    • Hashtables did not obey the rule that equal objects must have equal hashcodes, so using hashtables as hashtable keys did not work.
    • New mismatch ( seq seq -- i ) word returns first index where two sequences differ, or -1 if they have equal elements.
    • New drop-prefix ( seq seq -- seq seq ) word returns a pair of sequences which have the same elements as the two input sequences, with the common prefix removed.
  • Everything else:
    • On Mac OS X, signal 11 errors caused by stack under/overflow no longer trigger the OS X crash reporter dialog.
    • Easier exception handling. The cleanup ( try cleanup -- ) word encapsulates the following idiom:

      [ A ] [ B rethrow ] catch
      [ A ] [ B ] cleanup
      

      The recover ( try recover -- ) word encapsulates the following idiom:

      [ A ] [ [ B ] when* ] catch
      [ A ] [ B ] recover
      

      The catch ( try -- error/f ) word no longer takes a quotation that receives the error caught; rather, it just pushes the error that was caught on the stack. That is, the old way:

      [ A ] [ B ] catch
      

      Becomes:

      [ A ] catch B
      

      However, most uses of catch can be replaced by cleanup and recover.
    • The distinct t type is gone. Now, the t object is just a symbol.
    • A new with-server ( port ident quot -- ) combinator takes care of listening on a network socket, logging client connections, spawning client handler threads, and error handling. The quotation is called for each client, in a new scope with the client socket as the default stream.
    • New 1+, 1- words are a bit faster than 1 + and 1 - since there is one less generic dispatch involved.
    • On Windows, FFI errors would raise a signal 11 instead of reporting a nice message.
  • Contributed code:
    • The HTTP server and client has been moved from library/httpd/ to library/contrib/.
    • Intel 8080 CPU and Space Invaders emulator in contrib/space-invaders (Chris Double)
    • AOL Instant Messenger chat client library in contrib/aim (Doug Coleman)
    • Cairo graphics library binding in contrib/cairo. (Sampo Vuori)
    • Advanced math library with quaternions, matrices, polynomials, statistics and various functions in contrib/math/. (Doug Coleman)
    • Dimensioned units in contrib/units/. (Doug Coleman)
    • X11 binding in contrib/x11/ (Eduardo Cavazos)

Factor 0.78:

• Consecutive stack operations are now composed into single shuffle expressions.
• The return stack pointer is now stored in a register on x86.
• Non-recursive inline words are compiled more efficiently.
• Fix PowerPC bootstrap issue, and fixnum-shift, fixnum/i overflow.

Factor 0.77:

• Compiler:
  • Optimizing out conditionals where the test value is a constant.
  • Optimizing out type checks that are always/never satisfied.
  • Inlining method bodies when generic words are called on values with known compile-time types.
  • Side-effect-free words that output immutable values are evaluated at compile time if all their inputs are literal. You can declare a word as having this condition by suffixing the definition with foldable, eg:

    : cube dup dup * * ; foldable

  • Various arithmetic identities such as 1 * are optimized out.
• Collections:
  • sort ( seq quot -- | quot: elt elt -- -1/0/1 ) combinator now works with any sequence, not just a list. The comparator also has to return a signed integer, not just a boolean. It is much faster than the old sorting algorithm.
  • binsearch ( elt seq quot -- i | quot: elt elt -- -1/0/1 ) and binsearch ( elt seq quot -- elt | quot: elt elt -- -1/0/1 ) combinators perform a binary search on a sorted sequence.
  • 2each ( seq seq quot -- quot: elt -- elt ) combinator
  • join ( seq glue -- seq ) word. Takes a sequence of sequences, and constructs a new sequence with the glue in between each sequence. For example:

      [ "usr" "bin" "grep" ] "/" join
    "usr/bin/grep"

  • Integers now support the sequence protocol. An integer is an increasing sequence of its predecessors. This means the count ( n -- [ 0 ... n-1 ] ) word is gone; just use >vector instead. Also, project has been made redundant by map.
  • The seq-transpose ( seq -- seq ) word is now named flip.
  • The matrices library has been greatly simplified. Matrices are now represented as vectors of vectors, and matrix words have been moved to the math vocabulary.
  • More descriptive "out of bounds" errors.
  • New make-hash ( quot -- namespace ) combinator executes quotation in a new namespace, which is then pushed on the stack.
  • The <namespace> word is gone. It would create a hashtable with a default capacity. Now, just write {{ }} clone.
  • Sequence construction words changed:

    make-list    ==> [ ] make
    make-vector  ==> { } make
    make-string  ==> "" make
    make-rstring ==> "" make reverse
    make-sbuf    ==> SBUF" " make
    

  • The every? word has been replaced with monotonic? ( seq quot -- ? ). Its behavior is a superset of every? -- it now accepts any transitive relation, and checks if the sequence is monotonic under this relation. For example, [ = ] monotonic? checks if all elements in a sequence are equal, and [ < ] monotonic? checks for a strictly increasing sequence of integers.
• Development tools:
  • In the UI, object slots are now clickable in the inspector.
  • Inspector now supports a history and an interactive loop; it prints a brief help message when it starts describing usage.
  • The prettyprinter has been merged with the unparser. The unparse ( object -- string ) word has been moved to the prettyprint vocabulary, and can now produce a parsable string for any class supported by the prettyprinter.
  • New unparse-short ( object -- string ) returns a string no longer than a single line.
  • The prettyprinter now supports many more configuration variables. See the handbook for details.
  • New profile ( word -- ) word. Causes the word's accumulative runtime to be stored in a global variable named by the word. This is done with the annotation facility, the word's definition is modified; use reload ( word -- ) to get the old definition back from the source file.
• User interface:
  • Binary search is now used for spacial indexing where possible. This improves performance when there are a lot of lines of output in the listener.
  • Scroll bars now behave in a more intuitive manner, closer to conventional GUIs.
  • Menus now appear when the mouse button is pressed, not released, and dragging through the menu with the button held down behaves as one would expect.
  • The data stack and call stack are now shown. In the single-stepper, these two display the state of the program being stepped. In the inspector, the call stack display is replaced with an inspector history.
  • Pack layouts with gaps are now supported.
  • Many bug fixes.
• Everything else:
  • New sleep ( ms -- ) word pauses current thread for a number of milliseconds.
  • New with-datastack ( stack word -- stack ) combinator.
  • New cond ( conditions -- ) combinator. It behaves like a set of nested iftes, and compiles if each branch has the same stack effect. See its documentation comment for details.
  • Formally documented method combination (G: syntax) in handbook.
  • Erlang/Termite-style concurrency library in contrib/concurrency (Chris Double).
  • Completely redid infix algebra in contrib/algebra/. Now, vector operations are possible and the syntax doesn't use so many spaces. New way to write the quadratic formula:

    MATH: quadratic[a;b;c] =
        plusmin[(-b)/2*a;(sqrt(b^2)-4*a*c)/2*a] ;

    (Daniel Ehrenberg)
  • Support for client sockets on Windows. (Mackenzie Straight)

Factor 0.76:

• UI framework:
  • Now uses 3-dimensional co-ordinates throughout
  • Gradient paint, bevel border paint
  • Split pane gadget
  • Horizontal scroll bars and wheel mouse scrolling in scroller gadgets
  • Incremental layout improves listener responsiveness
  • The listener supports styled text output and presentations
  • Slide-show tutorial with live code examples
  • Performance improvements, code cleanups, bug fixes
• Sequences:
  • The following formely list-specific words are now generic:

    all? ( seq quot -- ? | quot: elt -- ? )
    all-with? ( obj seq quot -- ? | quot: elt -- ? )
    subset ( seq quot -- seq | quot: elt -- ? )
    subset-with ( obj seq quot -- seq | quot: obj elt -- ? )
    fiber? ( seq quot -- ? | quot: elt elt -- ? )
    prune ( seq -- seq )

  • The contains? word for testing membership in a sequence has been renamed to member? ( elt seq -- ? ).
  • The list-specific some? and some-with? combinators are gone. Their replacements are generic:

    contains? ( seq quot -- ? | quot: elt -- ? )
    contains-with? ( obj seq quot -- ? | quot: obj elt -- ? )
    find ( seq quot -- i elt | quot: elt -- ? )
    find* ( i seq quot -- i elt | quot: elt -- ? )
    find-with ( obj seq quot -- i elt | quot: elt -- ? )
    find-with* ( obj i seq quot -- i elt | quot: elt -- ? )

    See the developer's handbook for details.
  • The nreverse ( seq -- ) word has been removed.
  • reverse-slice ( seq -- seq ) outputs a new sequence that shares structure with the given sequence, but presents elements in reverse order.
  • The string-compare primitive has been replaced with the lexi word which now operates on any pair of sequences of numbers. The string> word has been replaced with lexi>.
  • The , word no longer accepts a string as input inside a make-string. In 0.75, the following two lines were equivalent:

    [ "Hello" , " world" , ] make-string
    [ "Hello" % " world" % ] make-string

  • Now, the former raises a type error. Use , with characters, and % with strings inside make-string.
• Streams:
  • The following words have been renamed:

    stream-auto-flush ==> stream-finish ( stream -- )
    stream-write-attr ==> stream-format ( string style stream -- )
    write-attr ==> format ( string style -- )

  • The following words no longer accept character arguments:

    stream-format ( string style stream -- )
    format ( string style -- )
    stream-write ( string stream -- )
    write ( string -- )
    stream-print ( string -- )
    print ( string -- )

  • Use the new words to write characters:

    stream-write1 ( char stream -- )
    write1 ( char -- )

    Note that stream-write1 is generic and your stream must implement it.
  • with-string word renamed to string-out ( quot -- string )
  • New string-in ( string quot -- ) word, calls quot with stdio bound to a stream that reads from the given string.
• Everything else:
  • Many improvements to the matrices library.
  • Improved inspector. Call it with inspect ( obj -- ).
  • The number of generations used for garbage collection can now be set with the +G command line switch. You must specify at least 2 generations.
  • Only 2 generations are used by default now, since there seems to be no performance benefit to having 3 after running some brief benchmarks.
  • Fixed bug where images saved from the jEdit plugin would fail to start.
  • md5 hashing algorithm in contrib/crypto/ (Doug Coleman).