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Release of iForth vsn 6.0.1

Registered users can download the archive (~300MB) from http://www.iforth.org/release. The passwords haven't changed.

Changes

• iForth6 compiles itself (metacompiler ported to 64bit)
• Fixed major problems of FORGET and dynlibs.frt
• Currently no open bugs
• Corrected numerous minor flaws in the examples
• Forth frame buffer -- on Windows about 10x faster than standard library calls
• Device Control Blocks unify and secure the console, disk, null, string, memory, and MIDI I/O streams
• Fixed the pipe implementation for Windows 10/11

Features

• Contains full 64-bit assembler and disassembler with SSE/SSE2 capability (a few minor bug fixes).
• The thread system has again been massively improved and is now POSIX compliant. Threads give an almost n times speedup with n-core CPUs in case of heavy FP computations or graphics codes. Graphics, GUI and mouse run in separate threads. On Windows the integrated editor is back --it did not work on iForth5-- and is also running in a separate thread. Each thread has its own console and graphics context. The graphics, mouse and keyboard, and all other I/O, are thread-safe.
• PAUSE has been removed in vsn 6, but BLOCK is still multi-threaded.
• The graphics system is 100% compatible between the three OSs (Windows/Linux/OSX). The framebuffer-based multi-threaded graphics run an acceptable GUI written in 100% Forth (Demo applications are fotoapp, fotobase and fJack Audio/MIDI). On Linux the xmini Forth graphics subsystem is available.
• A MIDI and WAV playing system -- vari-speed, stereo panning, MIDI-triggered audio samples integrated in the MANX music composing language. A single MIDI/MANX source tree for all three OSs. MIDI/Audio uses fJack on all OSs, where Linux can additionally use ALSA, and on Windows native MMI calls are possible.
• Threaded timer pool.
• Improved high-precision timer (TSC) and CPU identification support.
• Gdb breakpoints on Linux.
• The real-time performance is sufficient for real-time sound manipulation in high-level Forth (fJack). Software instruments (Karplus-Strong, simple organ, frequency shifter, sound-processing tools) are coded in high-level Forth.
• Pre-coded interfaces for many libraries: BLAS, LApack, FFTW, FreeImage, SDL, infinite precision floating-point (MPFR and MPC), Gnuplot, syssim (SPICE), FFL 8.0.0. The dynamic library linker supports inherited typedefs. It is a superset of the SwiftForth interface and compatible with VFX. Callbacks are supported. An extensive chaining mechanism enables safe turnkey applications and robust FORGETting.
• A plotter that uses TeX for type-setting its text labels.
• Anonymous definitions ([: ;] ), supporting locals.
• Operator Precedence Grammar (an extension of Wil Baden's ideas) that transparently supports integers, single-, double- and extended-precision IEEE floats, complex double precision, infinite precision FP (real and complex), and matrices and arrays of all these types.
• 256 color support for the iForth console, both in text and graphics mode. Supported are BOLD, BRIGHT, UNDERLINE and ITALICS, and any fixed-size font in graphics mode.
• A high-level mouse driver in a separate thread.
• Improved LOCATE tool that makes the HELP systems almost unnecessary.
• Windows, Linux and OSX versions use the Intel MKL BLAS, LApack,and FFTW3 libraries. The matrix multiply benchmark peaks around 120 GFlops on Linux.
• Support for MATLAB/Simulink and SciLab/XCOS, LTspice (as a co-routine) and NGSPICE (iForth runs as a callback in XSPICE, and you can use a shared ngspice library shell).
• A Matlab compatibe PLACE routine (robpole) in Forth.

The 6.0 release concentrated on bug fixes, highspeed graphics, improved threading and unified I/O. Coming releases will again focus on speed and high level approaches to optimization.

iForth vsn 5.0

Changes:

1. We have made the switch to 64bit -- there is no official 32bit iForth 5.0. The open bug and bug/month counters for the kernel/optimizer are now lower than they were for 32bit iForth. A large number of flaws have been corrected, especially for the Windows version.
2. Knuth-type co-routines supported through PAUSE.
3. Both Windows and Linux now use the ACML BLAS and LApack libraries.

The 5.0 release concentrates on correct implementation, stability and feature completeness.

The last release of iForth32/64, vsn. 4.0.6, is ready. Shipping started January 2011.

iForth64 for Windows, Linux and OSX (November 2009)

iForth32 for Windows, Linux and OSX

Because of the truly awesome contributions of two iForth users, very significant improvements were implemented for the final 32-bit release (all of them available for iForth64 also) ...

1. Hanno Schwalm has worked on the iForth meta source code (thought to be humanly unreadable!) and succeeded to free up a CPU register, without any degradation of execution speed. This free register is used to cache the address of the iForth USER area.

   The result is that iForth has now OS-level threads and callbacks for each supported platform. There is no limit on what threads and callbacks are allowed to do: floating-point arithmetic, execution of complete SPICE jobs, multiple invocations of external programs, even compilation of thread-local Forth code -- it will all work.

   Threads and callbacks have private stacks (data, return, floating-point, system, and locals), plus a private USER area and dictionary. Semaphored I/O is supported for threads, and Forth-level interactive debugging of parallel code (.S ABORT etc.) is possible.

   The iForth parallel constructs (inherited from tForth) have been extensively tested in a real-time application (Linux driver for the AOR 7030 shortwave receiver) that uses the FPU extensively, talks to the PC audio system and radio hardware, and supports a GUI written in Forth. The AOR 7030 code is included as a user contribution (it supports a "dummy" radio as fallback).

2. Hanno Schwalm rationalized the terminal control sequences used to set attributes (e.g. INVERSE BOLD ITALICS) and colors (red blue etc.) in both text and graphic mode.

3. Hanno also wrote a truly awesome iForth graphics driver for X-windows that works under both Linux and Mac OSX. Apart from very fast graphics, this driver supports multi-font text output and mouse control. The driver is thread-safe and it is possible (although not necessarily useful ;-) to run any number of iForth graphics programs in parallel.

   iForth graphics run unmodified on all platforms (Windows, X, OSX)

4. Charles Turner has ported the Linux server "C" codes to Mac OSX and in the process genericized them.

   Yes, iForth32 now works not only on Windows and Linux, but also on Intel Macs (under both Debian Linux and OSX)!

5. OpenGL driver bugs were removed. OpenGL code now works bugfree on Windows, Linux, and OSX.

6. A blocking sound driver (OSS/ALSA) for Linux is available, as is an experimental non-blocking sound/MIDI driver. The MANX program runs unchanged on both Windows and Linux. Unfortunately, sound does not work yet for OSX. However, for all platforms a uniform Jack interface is in the design stage.

7. Extensive floating-point library support (GotoBLAS, NRC, FFTW, GINT, Atlas) is integrated on all platforms. Typical processing speed is around 8 GFLOPS (double precision) for matrix multiplication (1.6 GHz Core Duo). All code follows the extended FSL conventions and Forth native memory layout. Pre-compiled Linux and OSX binaries are available to save some hassle for new users.

   Interfaces to Matlab, Excel, MathCAD, LTspice, CONV, Mag_Tool, LeCroy oscilloscopes, BOSS and Roland synthesizers.

8. At this moment (May 2008) installation programs are being prepared for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. However, be warned that iForth is definitely not for beginners! Shipping will start end of May. As always, recent users will receive free updates.

9. iForth32 now comes with 24,552 example and documentation files. Server source code for Linux and OSX is included. The examples work on all platforms, save for some Windows GUI demos, and with a few omissions on OSX because of the still lacking sound driver.

10. Minor fixes: input of lower-case HEX is now possible and S\" and PARSE-NAME have been added to the kernel. X:deferred, X:defined, X:ekeys, X:extension-query, X:number-prefix, X:parse-name are also available (but not X:required, X:structures, and X:throw-iors). iForth does have NEEDS and structure packages, of course.

    Added EKEY>FKEY and all key constants (ALT SHIFT and CONTROL masks only for Windows).

    iForth tries to reasonably track the Forth20x0 standard.

11. Path name support has been improved. It is now possible to trace the names of files given only by their handle. iForth remembers the state of the command line buffer and the current path in the user's home directory.

12. The Forth Foundation library has been ported to iForth.

13. Some 60 problems of the Euler Project are now available.

14. New and ugraded library support for
    • Jack W. Crenshaw's "Let's Build a Compiler" series
    • SOD64 and eForth64 experimental 64-bit Forths
    • FITS driver (cfitsio library)
    • RSS, telnet, and IRC micro client platform independent libraries
    • RAR and UNRAR library support
    • SQLITE 3.0 library bindings
    • SWISSEPH (sweph, compute a celestial body or point position) support
    • A compiler for Tiny-C (compiles to a virtual machine)
15. Included the online version of Starting Forth, the original (TM :-).

The iForth development team

(Marcel Hendrix, Hanno Schwalm and Charles Turner)

iForth for Windows XP

(Backdrop picture is the graphics window, full-size. On top of it you see the iForth console window, partly overlapped with the RTF editor. The editor has some menus open.) (Screenshot created with iForth) (Backdrop picture is the graphics window, full-size. On top of it you see the iForth console window, partly overlapped with the RTF editor. The editor has some menus open.)

iForth vsn 2.0 (June 2002)

It was observed that on the 900 MHz Athlon and above VFX seems to disproportionally benefit from the increased clockspeed. The new optimizer makes iForth again competitive with MPE's VFX on the faster chips. For some integer benchmarks VFX can still be seen to be between 10% and 30% faster than iForth 2.0. For floating-point there is no valid comparison possible with VFX (VFX doesn't optimize FP code). iForth is (much) faster than VC++ 6.0 for the FLOPS benchmark. The remaining differences between iForth and the competition have been identified as suboptimal stackpointer assignment and alignment problems that will be fixed in the next release.

Systems tested with "MPEBench/benchm.frt"

iForth 1.12 run at 21:47:12, September 30, 2001
iForth 2.00 run at 16:39:57, May 19, 2002

Test time excluding overhead               ms          ms    improvement
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eratosthenes sieve 1899 Primes            350         266 	1.32
Fibonacci recursion ( 35 -> 9227465 )     504         500	1.00
Hoare's quick sort (reverse order)        244         164	1.49
Generate random numbers (1024 kb array)   155         178	0.87
LZ77 Comp. (400 kb Random Data Mem>Mem)   774         288	2.69
Dhrystone (integer)                       393         300	1.33
Total:                                   2420	     1696	1.43

This is an AMD Athlon 900 MHz machine running Windows 2000. The compilers are iForth 1.12.8351 versus MS VC++ 6.00. Both have their settings customized for speed.

        .------------------------.------------------------.
        |     iForth 1.12.8351   |       MS VC++ 6.0      |
.-------+------------------------+------------------------'
|Module |   Error       MFLOPS   |    Error       MFLOPS  |
|-------+------------------------+------------------------|
|   1   |  4.8317E-13   538.4615 |  1.3358e-012  449.5735 |
|   2   |  1.8135E-13   466.1811 |  2.0517e-013  373.3333 |
|   3   | -9.6647E-15   431.9174 |  1.7542e-014  402.2181 |
|   4   |  1.5201E-13   570.7491 | -5.4512e-014  441.7855 |
|   5   | -1.2225E-13   582.0006 |  3.3307e-016  459.7473 |
|   6   | -6.9949E-15   638.4589 | -1.9040e-014  470.3497 |
|   7   | -1.1880E-11   153.5386 |  2.6034e-011  230.2849 |
|   8   | -8.7737E-14   662.9834 | -5.4068e-014  486.5687 |
`-------'------------------------'------------------------'

Because of the enormous amount of changes in the compiler all of iForth's examples were carefully checked and double checked for problems. All bugs were fixed, and in most cases extra documentation and help words were added. However, the installation procedures on Windows and Linux have not changed much -- let alone improved.

The Linux iForth has been carefully reviewed on a SuSE 8.0 system. This means that you now can run iForth on the Linux console and in X, or over a network with telnet or ssh. The X graphics driver is still rudimentary, but it does work. There were changes in OpenGL since Linux 2.0 and I could not get this to work for iForth 2.0. Postponed! Also, SVGALIB seems to have died, and the framebuffer people have not filled in the gap completely. In the next iForth release the old SVGALIB functionality may have been restored through use of libggi and libgii.

Release 2.0 does not yet fix the old problem with STATE. The next release will redefine the meaning of the iForth xt, and there will be separate routines for interpretation and compilation (and ...)

iForth vsn 1.12 (August 2001)

The x86 seems to be _extremely_ sensitive to aligned data. This was not a problem in the past because the rest of ( FP ) iForth was not fast enough to show it. With all the new optimizations it proves that extended FP is about twice slower than double-precision (64-bit). Also because the 80-bit format does not support optimization fully (you can't combine 80-bit fetch and store with other instructions), I decided to make DP the standard iForth FP format. Also tried a native single precision (as opposed to explicitly using SF@ etc.) iForth but it was only marginally faster and there would be problems with NRC CLAPACK and GAUSSJ.

An x86 has severe stack-alignment problems . Here I found that unaligned stacks slowed down the assembler BLAS by a factor of 2! (verified with the Linux executable). This is fixed for all OS's.

Another problem is accessing data that is in the same cache line as code. This has been fixed for all standard Forth words (VARIABLE CONSTANT VALUE etc.), but user defined data (e.g. with DOES> ) can not automatically be adjusted. When the programmer does not leave a sufficiently wide gap there will be a large slowdown on some codes (factor of 4 was observed). For the Pentium a gap of 32 bytes (cacheline size) between data and code is enough. For the Athlon this must be 64 bytes (worst case). Unfortunately, optimal AMD alignment hurts older Pentia. For best results _calign_ and _align_ should be set up by the user in the iForth.prf file.

iForth can now control and automate MATLAB 5.x.

Added the word PASCAL-CALLBACK so that iForth can now call Visual Basic. See the Neural Net demo in ./examples/nn/nn51.frt for an example of use.

Improved the speed of ALLOCATE FREE and RESIZE . From now on, the iForth memory manager will only be used in case there is no OS.

iForth now allows spaces in file names (using single or double quotes).

Installed a new and much faster READ-LINE library.

Again, I could not complete everything on my wishlist (some Linux X graphics and OpenGL code still isn't ready for prime-time). I decided to release a version 1.12 because (1) I had promised too many people a (free) upgrade over too long a period of time and (2) the current source tree performed decent with respect to current MPE and Forth Inc. native-code products. The projected final version 2.0 will contain a nicely integrated symmetric disassembler/assembler pair and a code generator with register coloring.

iForth for Windows XP (2006)

What is iForth?

• A full 32-bit Forth with a 4 GByte flat address space. It works with any machine having a '386+'387 or better. iForth runs under MS-DOS as a protected mode program, using D.J. Delorie's GO32 dos extender. A Linux 2.0 version is available since December 10, 1996, upgraded to Linux 2.2.12 on December 21, 1999. The Windows NT 4.0 version became available as of April 23, 1997. A Windows 95 port will never be released. A Windows 2000 version is available since November 2000. iForth has been tried on many different PC's / CPU types without problems. The DOS-iForth uses DPMI and VCPI and can run in a DOS-box under Windows 3.x, Windows '95 or Windows NT (no graphics however). For all Windows related programming the new Windows XP iForth is much better suited.
• iForth uses subroutine-threading. The generated code is improved with a combination of macro expansion, special-casing, and peephole optimizing. The programs build with iForth are as fast as those generated with Borland Pascal 7.0 but become much faster when special (i)Forth tricks are used. Out-of-the-box iForth programs are about 20% slower than programs compiled with Tom Almy's FORTHCMP (FORTHCMP compiled programs are claimed to be faster than C). Current benchmarks say iForth 1.12 programs are about 70% the speed of "C" programs compiled with MSC 4.51, but with a single CODE word become twice faster than "C" (PII-350 MHz machine, matrix-mult benchmark).
• iForth is a multi-tasking Forth (uses threads on XP, pthreads on Linux).
• iForth is an ANS Forth. Every word defined in the ANS Forth standard is available in iForth. iForth also contains lots of words to interface to the PC hardware (directly under MS-DOS, mostly through libraries in the iServer under Linux / XP). Operating system commands and utility programs are only a single keypress away. There is a simple RTF built-in editor for XP, but you are supposed to keep using the professional tools you have now. iForth has full protected mode assemblers and disassemblers as loadable options.
• iForth has lots of standard (but implementation dependent) utilities and can be used with any DFW Forth (Dutch Forth Workshop). See the list below. Other DFW Forth's are tForth (for parallel arrays of T800 transputers), dspForth (for TMS320C30), a Forth for the 8051 and a 16-bit 8088...80386 Forth (CHForth).
• A large number of examples is available: see the listing below. There are graphics examples, floating-point utilities (CHAOS, neural nets, circuit simulators), language compilers and interpreters (AWK, Pascal, BASIC, Lisp, PL/1, Pilot), code to play .WAV and .MID files, generate .WAV files from audio-CDs, access Net hardware, output presentation quality graphics on the system printer, generate .WMF and .EMF files. Latest additions: OpenGL toolbox, parallel extensions, a metacompiler (META) that will generate fast, platform-independent 32-bit Forths. The example source code generates mxForth, an efficient Forth that is several times faster than most other Forths.
• Under Linux and XP there is support for (named) pipes, dynamic linking, Tcl/Tk, (X-)windows, SVGA graphics and full digital sound. Under Linux MIDI-output is through a simple I/O-port driver, not through OSS-Free (XP uses the system libraries). Under Linux and XP direct I/O to virtual console screens is supported.
• Comes with a 292 page (.pdf) manual on disk. The online help facilities use the ASCII residue of the manual and an (iForth-generated) extensively cross-referenced HTML document.
• Support is e-mail based.
• A port of iForth to Linux 2.2.12 is available since December 21, 1999. The Linux port was done using assembler. I/O functions are provided by a server program written in C, the iServer (conceptually like tForth for the transputer). The full source code of this iServer is supplied. The iServer is a setuid program that must be compiled by root. This server adapts itself automatically to the X-window environment. On May 9, 1997 the iServer came to the same revision level as the XP release (The Linux release can't of course support DDE, system fonts and EMF/WMF files). After that, the Linux iForth has not been updated until January 2001. Currently, an X-windows and MESA OpenGL graphics library are in the works (using pthreads).
• (Screenshot created with Tcl/Tk driven from iForth)
  The iForth port to Windows NT 4.0 is available since April 23, 1997. The NT port was done using assembler and C. I/O functions are again provided by a server program written in C, the iServer (see the Linux port above). The source code of this iServer is not normally supplied (the tools needed to rebuild the iServer are five times more expensive than iForth itself). In principle the Linux and Windows iServers are exactly alike, in practice the Windows version has more functionality build in (printing, clipboard support, DDE ...). Tcl/Tk 8.0 works spectacularly well together with iForth under Windows XP, as shown above.
• A port to Windows 95/98/ME was attempted but in practice there were problems with the graphics extensions and the lack of a real 32-bit shell.
• The NT iForth ran unchanged under Windows 2000 (See the benchmarks page for AMD Thunderbird results under Windows 2000). Note carefully: The current iForth is for Windows XP or better. This is because the new memory management routines that support SSE code are only available under XP, not for Win2K or lower. A recent Tcl/Tk is available for XP.

What am I allowed to do with iForth?

Now why is iForth not freeware?

• It is not my intention to take away business from regular Forth vendors.
• I really want to discourage people that play with Forth to build Yet Another Forth. Building wonderful applications and libraries is a worthier goal. (If you are Dutch, mentally insert the phrase "Als de vos de passie preekt.." at this spot.)
• It means you will get support when you need it. It also means a certain level of quality is guaranteed (this is not to say free software has no quality or no support!)
• You can apply for a free copy of iForth if you are planning to use it for something beneficial to the Forth community at large. But please be serious and don't waste my time. I've grown very cynical in this respect.

Linux

• interface with MS-DOS
• update the text screen
• implement graphics

• the OS and hardware interface is handled in the iServer, so you just add the needed functions to it and recompile (you'll need to learn C). At the moment IEEE instrument interface bus support is available for Linux through a GPLed library. Hardware that comes with precompiled DOS or Windows drivers and no source code is out of the question.
  
• The Windows C-server code is not distributed because the tool to compile it is several times more expensive than iForth itself. However, very low-level extensions are possible by simply using the dynamic link calls supplied by the C-server. Every system library can be opened and its code experimented with straight from the iForth command line, interactively. (Of course, iForth for Linux has these exact same possibilities).
• Graphics are implemented through SVGALIB or WIN32 calls. This handles all hardware issues. Under Linux and Windows many more graphic modes are supported, however the MS-DOS graphics are a little faster. Because svgalib also supports accelerator cards, which GO32 can't do, the future lies with Linux. The Windows graphics are somewhat slower than the Linux graphics. However, XP allows truly spectacular graphics printed output that can be output in .WMF and .EMF files and put on the clipboard directly.

NEW How to order iForth for Windows, OSX and Linux

Buy iForth with PayPal

Additional info on iForth for Windows XP

iForth for XP comes in the form of a binary image file and the iServer executable. There is no fancy install program (necessary :) Simply copy the files to a directory tree, setup an icon for the iwserver executable, then add two environment variables. Done.

Contact

email : mhx@iae.nl
home  : Marcel Hendrix
        Susanna Groeneweghof 8
        6004 SC Weert
        The Netherlands
phone : +31-6-1173-1634

Overview of the distribution

 Volume in drive C is FRUNOMAIN
 Volume Serial Number is 3C3C-1AE6

 Directory of C:\DFWFORTH\EXAMPLES

[.]                [..]               [basic]            [benchmar]
[blocks]           [caesar]           [editor]           [expert90]
[games]            [sod]              [audiocd]          [graphics]
[gray-3]           [hawk]             [lisp]             [misc]
[mpascal]          [neural]           [numeric]          [fsl]
[nspice]           [simulati]         [mix]              [orkest]
[pascal]           [modem]            [ansi]             [tcl_tk]
[classes]          [modem2]           [xwindows]         [bignum]
[ethernet]         [fltest]           [fserver]          [grayo]
[magloss]          [mpqss]            [pl1]              [postscri]
[scope]            [transput]         [junky]            [fitting]
[mxf2]             [emcmeas]          [nrc]              [matlab]
[codebase]         [threads]

Home directory is EXAMPLES\

42476544 bytes in 1842 files, contained in 74 sub-directories + Home.

 Volume in drive C is FRUNOMAIN
 Volume Serial Number is 3C3C-1AE6

 Directory of C:\DFWFORTH\INCLUDE

[.]            [..]           eplot.frt      dosmouse.frt   goto.frt
forthpad.h     loadsoun.bat   wingrf.frt     rs232com.frt   matrices.frt
os.frt         sort.frt       elip.frt       expint.frt     ffind.frt
glossary.frt   lmouse.frt     nrc.frt        heaps.frt      now.frt
proced.frt     ibcktrac.frt   imatrix.frt    iwords1.frt    iwords2.frt
graphics.frt   locdef.frt     xmatrix.frt    menus.frt      schema.frt
priq.frt       dialogs.frt    threads.frt    quads.frt      queues.frt
terminal.frt   search.frt     search2.frt    see.frt        fsl_util.frt
servgr16.frt   sets.frt       setstd.frt     dynlink.frt    gnugrafh.frt
speaker.frt    spline.frt     stacks.frt     streams.frt    strings.frt
dde.frt        sketcher.frt   sketch3d.frt   tmouse.frt     tracer.frt
trcount.frt    twords1.frt    twords2.frt    uniq.frt       wc.frt
npipes.frt     words.frt      assertio.glo   chebyshe.glo   glossary.glo
heaps.glo      locdef.glo     priq.glo       sketcher.glo   winconst.frt
pipes.frt      template.prf   sockets.frt    assemble.frt   miscutil.frt
assertio.frt   backtrac.frt   banner.frt     chebyshe.frt   [fonts]
complex.frt    cvfind.frt     pscript.frt    win32gui.frt   servgraf.frt
gnugraf.frt    linuxgrf.frt   cplx_fsl.frt   hpgl.frt       arrays.frt
clapack.frt    arraysx.frt    ix86asm.frt    wmouse.frt     playwav.frt
needs.frt      mouse.frt      assert.frt     esoteric.frt   html.frt
profiler.frt   stroked.frt    textloop.frt   whatenv.frt    pwavdos.frt
pwavewin.frt   pwavlinu.frt   terminal.prf   proced.prf     mci.frt
cliserv.frt    cliserv2.frt   dlstroke.frt   strokedx.frt   html2.frt
help.frt       iforth.prf     [windows]      os.prf         winstrok.frt
forthpad.rc    forthpad.res   wine.emf

             123 File(s)      1,072,244 bytes
                            103,088,128 bytes free