HELP NEWS.V13 A.Sloman Dec 1987
For most recent news please see HELP * NEWS
For a summary of changes introduced in V.13 please see
HELP * V13.CHANGES
August 1987
Aug 10 (Aaron Sloman and John Gibson)
--- In order to make the VED_?? work without autoloading it has
been moved into the core system. See HELP * VED_WHAT
--- LIB NEWVEDSYSFILE has been withdrawn and instead the system
procedure * VEDSYSFILE has been changed so that it invokes
the VED_?? mechanism if a search is unsuccessful. Its behaviour
can be controlled by two new variables VED_TRY_??
and VED_?_EXPLAIN. Making the first one false suppresses the
mechanism. Making the second one false reduces the verbosity
of VED_??.
Various HELP files have been updated accordingly.
Aug 7 (Aaron Sloman)
Added HELP * V13.CHANGES, which pesents the information from
this file in a more structured way.
July 30 (Andrew Law)
--- DOC *VEDUSERGUIDE formatted, on-line, extensive intro to VED
DOC * PAG on-line version of 'The Poplog Administrators Guide'
including info. on installation, disc space, site and terminal
customisation.
DOC *PWM technical details of the PWM
July 29 (John Gibson)
--- A new procedure, -pr_field-, gives a simple way of printing any
item in a fixed length field, either left-justified, right-justified
or centred. See REF *PRINT.
July 23 (John Gibson, Andrew Law, Simon Nichols, Robert Duncan)
--- The REF files for Version 13 POPLOG have been considerably extended
and revised, and there are the following new files:
REF *REFFILES
For an overview of REF files
REF *ARRAYS
Arrays and array procedures
REF *CHARIO
Character stream input and output
REF *IDENT
Identifiers
REF *LIBRARY
POP-11 Library Mechanisms (e.g autoloading)
REF *MISHAPS
POPLOG mishap handling
REF *POPCOMPILE
POP-11 compiler procedures
REF *PRINT
Printing procedures, etc
REF *PROLOG
Prolog Virtual Machine support in POPLOG
REF *PROGLIST
The input stream used in POPLOG by many system modules
including the POP-11 compiler
REF *STACK
The POP-11 stack and procedures for operating on it
REF *SYSTEM
Various POPLOG system control procedures
REF *TIMES
Data and Time and Timer procedures
In addition, REF *MISC is now defunct (the procedures formerly in it
having been dispersed to the new files). REF POPVARS is also in the
process of being made redundant.
July 22 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Added complex_key to autoloadable library, by analogy with
pair_key, word_key, etc. SHOWLIB * COMPLEX_KEY
July 14 (David Young)
--- LIB * GAMMA provides the Gamma function, a higher transcendental
function useful for some mathematical work. See HELP * GAMMA.
July 10 (John Gibson)
--- (Sun Only) When using the Suncore library routines, the initialisation
function -_initialize_core- redefines the handling of the SIGCHLD signal
in a way that invalidates the use of -syswait- in POPLOG, causing it to
give a 'NO CHILDREN' mishap (the Suncore routine preempts -syswait- by
waiting on any children the process creates).
To get round this problem (at least) for -sysobey-, that procedure now
sets SIGCHLD to be ignored while waiting for the child process it creates.
(There is really no general solution: the -wait- mechanism in Unix is just
inadequate.)
July 10 (A. Sloman)
--- Fixed a bug in LIB VED_MAIL (Unix only). Stopped it occasionally
reading new mail into the VED command buffer.
July 4 (John Gibson)
--- The procedure -explode- now has an updater, i.e. it fills the given
structure with elements from the stack. This works on all structures for
which -explode- works (except for words and properties); on lists, it uses
the updater of -dl- (also newly added), e.g.
[0 0 0 0] -> list;
4,5,6,7 -> dl(list);
list =>
** 4 5 6 7
In addition, -fill-, -mapdata- and -ncmapdata- now work on all structures
for which -appdata- does (the only difference between the updater of
-explode- and -fill- is that the latter treats lists as pairs).
June 21 (A. Sloman)
--- Added new help file * ISACTIVE, updated * ACTIVE_VARIABLES
June 20 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Bug in -tree_printable- in LIB * SHOWTREE fixed.
--- LIB * VED_WHATS fixed to cope with entries terminated by
a blank line.
June 15 (John Williams)
--- (UNIX ONLY)
POPLOG no longer interferes with 'umask'. Hence the permissions of
files created by POPLOG (using -syscreate- or VED) will be the
result of masking -pop_file_mode- with 'umask'.
See HELP * POP_FILE_MODE
June 11 (John Gibson)
--- Inadequacies in -random0- and -random- have been cured: they now
generate much more uniformly distributed numbers than previously, with no
excessive correlation between one value and the next. For simple integers
and single floats, the cycle length of the sequence generated (i.e. how
many are produced before the sequence will start to repeat) is now 2**30
on all systems (for big integers and double floats it will be at least
2**29). HELP* RANDOM updated
June 7 (John Gibson)
--- The fix (Dec 19 1986 Version 12.4) for a bug in sections that caused
non-global identifiers associated with system words (or words locked into
the system with -sys_lock_heap-) to be imported into every section was
incorrect: it prevented non-global identifiers locked with -sys_lock_heap-
from being imported into sections into which they were explicitly imported
(or implicitly imported by being exports). The fix has now been corrected.
May 29 (Andrew Law)
--- HELP *IM added, giving an overview of "immediate mode"
--- LIB *NEWVEDSYSFILE added. This redefines *VEDSYSFILE to default
to use the *VED_WHAT mechanism. It makes the HELP command return
information in many more instances than it does at present. See
HELP *NEWVEDSYSFILE.
May 29 (Aaron Sloman)
--- READSTRINGLINE - a procedure that reads arguments for macros like
HELP, TEACH, SHOWLIB, has been made available to users.
Various teach files have been reformatted and updated, and some
missing ones re-instated, e.g. TEACH SOLVEMS, TEACH RESOLVEEXERCISE
May 28 (John Gibson)
--- (VMS only) In Version 13 of VMS POPLOG the external load
facilities have been re-implemented and considerably improved. The
principal changes are as follows (see REF *EXTERNAL for full
details):
Shareable Images
----------------
These are now fully handled, either when explicitly specified in
the -external_load- input file list or when implicitly extracted
from a shareable image library.
A shareable image is specified explicitly in the input file list
to -external_load- by postfixing its name with the normal linker
qualifier '/shareable' (or a valid abbreviation, e.g. '/share').
Note that the name specified is NOT a filename, but a shareable
image name as used by the VMS image activator -- that is, the name
of a system image in SYS$SHARE or a logical name referencing a
private image file. E.g.
'vaxcrtl/share' ;;; system image VAXCRTL
'myshare/share' ;;; where MYSHARE is a logical name for a file
Processing of -external_load- Input File List
---------------------------------------------
The list of strings specifying the input files to -external_load-
may now also include VMS linker command qualifiers. These are
recognised by an initial / character in a string, and are extracted
and added to the "link" command run to link the input files into
POPLOG. You should not, however, attempt to use any qualifiers other
than '/nosyslib', '/nosysshr' and '/nouserlib' (and their
abbreviations) in this context.
The remainder of the strings in the list are passed to the
linker as separate lines in a linker options file: this means that
you can use any of the standard positional qualifiers on filenames,
like '/library' etc. It also means you can specify special options,
although of these only 'symbol', 'psect_attr', 'collect' and
'cluster' are safe to use ('cluster' must NOT specify a base
address).
Dynamic Memory Allocated by External Procedures
-----------------------------------------------
One of the major changes in VMS POPLOG Version 13 is to allow the
system to cope with the segmentation of its heap space that results when
external procedures allocate dynamic memory at run-time (either through
the system service -sys$expreg- or the library routine -lib$get_vm-, etc).
External procedures can now allocate memory freely, and the user
need make no prior provision for this (as a result, the optional 4th
argument to -external_load- that previously specified the amount of memory
required is now redundant -- and, if given, is ignored).
Saving and Restoring the System
-------------------------------
Restoring a POPLOG saved image will reactivate any shareable images
loaded when the system was saved (as usual in VMS, names of
shareable images not in SYS$SHARE must be defined as logical names
at the time of restoring).
May 21 (Aaron Sloman)
--- VEDREFRESHSTATUS
This procedure refreshes the status line on the screen in the current
VED window.
--- SET_GLOBAL_VALOF(<item>,<word>)
A new autoloadable library procedure for setting the valof word in
all currently active contexts. See REF * IDENT/set_global_valof
--- ISDLOCAL(<word|identifer>,<procedure>)
returns true if the word or identifier corresponds to a dynamic
local variable of the procedure. See REF * IDENT/isdlocal
--- The two variables * POPDEFINECONSTANT and * POPDEFINEPROCEDURE
are now local to the compiler, and interpreted by the user definable
procedure POP11_DEFINE_DECLARE. See:
HELP * POPDEFINECONSTANT HELP * POPDEFINEPROCEDURE
REF * POPCOMPILE/pop11_define_declare
Because these are local to the compiler, SET_GLOBAL_VALOF is needed
to assign to them in the user's initialisation file, 'init.p'
May 20 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Procedures for manipulating blocks of text have been added
to the VED library:
* LIB VEDBLOCKS makes available a family of VED ENTER commands
for inserting, deleting, copying, moving or blanking out
text blocks. These make use of the following more primitive
facilities:
* VEDCUTBLOCK - delete or copy an arbitrary rectangular block of
text from the VED buffer, and return a vector of strings.
* VEDYANKBLOCK - yank a vector of strings into a rectangular
block of text in the VED buffer
* VEDREFRESHBLOCK - refresh an arbitrary rectangular block
of the screen
* VEDFILLBLOCK - fills a rectangular block with a character
For full details see the help files. These will be used to
define a set of interactive commands for manipulating text blocks.
May 12 (Andrew Law)
-- HELP *DOCUMENTATION added, explaining means of accessing
on-line sources of information in POPLOG
-- The following files added providing annotated overviews of
domains covered by POPLOG documentation:
Overviews of HELP files; HELP *HELPFILES (separately for
pop/lisp/help, pop/plog/help and pop/help/), HELP *FLAVOURS,
*INITIALISATION, *IO, *LISTS, *POP, *PROGRAMMING, *VED,
*PWMFILES
Overview of DOC files; DOC *DOCFILES
Overview of library files; HELP *LIBFILES
Overviews of TEACH files; TEACH *TEACHFILES, (added separately for
pop/plog/teach and pop/teach
Overview of REF files; REF *REFFILES
May 11 (Andrew Law)
-- Reformatted REF files to be 72 columns. Made all REF entries
lower case and added their identifiers. Added cross references
to the ved_what datafiles.
Apr 30 (John Williams)
-- Some new facilities for mixed language programming have been
added. These are:
POP11 libraries: LIB PLOG_GOALS LIB PLOGINPOP
Prolog libraries: LISPINPLOG
Lisp modules: PROLOG
See HELP * PLOG_GOALS, HELP * PLOGINPOP, PLOGHELP * LISPINPLOG and
the Lisp help file PROLOG.
Apr 30 (Aaron Sloman)
--- A bug in VEDEXCHANGEPOSITION has been fixed. It used to crash if
a stacked position was in an initial segment of the buffer that had
been deleted.
--- DOC * AAREAD.ME was once the Poplog installation guide. This has
been made redundant by the printed installation guide and Poplog
User Guide, and has been removed.
--- HELP * EXTERNAL describes a new interface to EXTERNAL_LOAD
making it far more convenient for programmers used to C or
FORTRAN, or wishing to use the NAG library. The facilities are
provided in a library package: LIB * EXTERNAL. The more basic
and general facilities are described in REF * EXTERNAL
Apr 28 (Aaron Sloman)
The Poplog User Guide refers to two files TEACH * POEM and
TEACH * POEM_BIT. These have now been installed!.
Apr 28 (Richard Bignell)
--- Environment variable $poplocal now defined to locate the base of
the local tree. This allows the local tree to be based outside the
POPLOG tree. The default value for $poplocal (which is $usepop/pop to
maintain compatibility with previous systems) is assigned in
$usepop/pop/com/poplog if a value has not already been assigned to it;
hence defining this variable at the same time as defining $usepop will
override the default. (see DOC * SYSSPEC).
Apr 26 (John Williams)
--- VED_LMR now trims trailing spaces from each line compiled
Apr 19 (Aaron Sloman)
--- LIB * LOGIC revitalised. This library is a program for teaching
elementary boolean logic using truth-tables. It used to depend on a
collection of files in a sub-library which was deleted making
LIB LOGIC useless. The files from the sub-library have been
re-instated in the single file LIB LOGIC, whose use is described
in HELP * LOGIC. A command file for creating a saved image
MKLOGIC (MKLOGIC.COM on VMS) has been provided in $usepop/pop/com
Apr 13 (John Williams)
--- Two new features of MISHAP messages:
(1) Successive calls of the same procedure are grouped together
in the DOING part of the message (eg seven recursive calls of
'foo' would be indicated by foo(*7)
(2) A new variable, POP_MISHAP_DOING_LIM, if given an integer value
limits the number of callers printed. Its default value is
FALSE, specifying that all callers should be displayed.
Apr 12 (Aaron Sloman)
--- New sections added to HELP * EFFICIENCY (accessible from PROLOG
as REF * EFFICIENCY). The new sections include advice on
avoiding garbage collections caused by unwittingly producing
ratios when dividing integers using "/".
--- Information about "/" and ratios clarified in several POP-11
and Prolog help files, i.e. HELP * MATH and
PLOGHELP * DIVIDE * DIV * EFFICIENCY
Apr 11 (John Gibson)
--- Fixed a bug which caused the function -abs- in MC68000 POPLOG systems
(e.g. Sun) to mishap when applied to floating-point complex zero. It now
correctly returns 0.0.
Mar 23 (A Sloman)
--- LIB VED_SEND on UNIX systems used a procedure SYSMODTIME which
had previously been only in Sussex Library. Now added to
autoloadable library. See HELP * SYSMODTIME
Mar 23 (John Williams)
--- Recogniser procedure for sections, ISSECTION, added to the
autoloadable library
Mar 2 (John Gibson)
--- Fixed a bug in the operator // which caused it to give an incorrect
remainder result when one of the arguments was a complex number
(similarily for REM).
Mar 1 (A. Sloman)
--- Documentation of arithmetic facilities corrected and extended:
HELP * MATH now summarises REF * NUMBERS. It points out that various
operators previously restricted to integers are no longer
restricted, e.g. // * REM, * DIV, * MOD
The operators MOD and REM have been different since Version 12, but
the HELP files said they were synonyms. Now corrected.
--- New fast integer procedures added to the library and documented
in REF * FASTPROCS, namely fi_rem fi_mod fi_div
--- NEW string procedures added, to complete the following
family: ISSTARTSTRING, ISSUBSTRING, ISENDSTRING, HASSTARTSTRING,
HASSUBSTRING, HASENDSTRING. The 'IS-' versions take the substring
as first argument, the 'HAS-' versions take it as last argument.
So, the HAS- versions can be partially applied to sub-strings.
See REF * STRINGS for details.
Feb 17 (A. Sloman)
--- VEDREADINTABS introduced a bug that caused the search mechansim
to remember the wrong search string. Now fixed.
--- VEDBACKLOCATE(<string>) bug fixed. It now copes properly with
strings at beginning of file.
--- VEDEXPAND bug fixed: it used not to behave properly with '^^'.
Simultaneously expanded built in expand options.
See TEACH * VEDEXPAND
Feb 5 (John Gibson)
--- A bug in the POPLOG Virtual Machine compiler has been fixed. Under
certain circumstances this caused incorrect code to be generated for
procedures that used non-local lvars and were also given as argument to a
system 'app' procedure (e.g. -applist-). (The symptom was that the 'app'
procedure actually got passed a <SYSTEM OBJECT> instead of the correct
lexical closure.)
Feb 3 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- * CHECKINTEGER added to autoloadable library.
Feb 2 (John Gibson)
--- (VMS Only) A bug that prevented POPLOG from being able to read Indexed
Sequential files is now fixed. For the time being, they can be read
(sequentially), but not created or written.
Jan 30 (John Gibson)
--- The information in the REF files COMPILE and SYSCOMPILE has been
reorganised and considerably expanded to create 3 new files (which replace
the former two):
REF *CHARIO - Describes character stream input/output
procedures (e.g. -discin-, -discout-)
REF *PROGLIST - Describes -proglist-, item-reading
and macro expansion procedures (like -itemread-)
REF *POPCOMPILE - A full description of the POP-11 compiler and
its associated procedures and variables
In producing REF POPCOMPILE, it became glaringly obvious just how
inadequate the existing names of the POP-11 compiler procedures were, both
in terms of their consistency and their meaningfulness; the occasion of
documenting this area properly seemed the ideal time to put things right.
The whole set have therefore been renamed (all beginning "pop11_"),
in a way that makes sense for REF POPCOMPILE and is consistent with REF
POPSYNTAX. A complete list of the new procedures and their old equivalents
is shown below.
NEW OLD
pop11_comp_stream syscompile
pop11_exec_stmnt_seq_to systxsqcomp_exec
pop11_comp_stmnt_seq sysxsqcomp(%true%)
pop11_comp_stmnt_seq_to systxsqcomp
pop11_comp_expr_seq sysxsqcomp(%false%)
pop11_comp_expr_seq_to (no equivalent)
pop11_comp_expr sysxcomp
pop11_comp_expr_to systxcomp
pop11_comp_prec_expr sys_expr_comp
pop11_EMPTY sysDUMMY_PREOP
pop11_FLUSHED sysDUMMY
pop11_comp_constructor sysstructure
pop11_comp_declaration sys_read_vars
pop11_need_nextitem sysneed
pop11_try_nextitem systry
pop11_try_nextreaditem sysnmtry
pop11_loop_start sysloop
pop11_loop_end sysloopend
There are also two new variable procedures, -pop11_define_declare- and
-pop11_define_props-, which are used by -define- respectively to declare
identifiers, and to supply default -pdprops- values for procedures being
defined. See REF *POPCOMPILE.
[N.B. The prefix "pop11_" on the -pdprops- of a procedure in the calling
chain is now treated by -sysprmishap- like "sys" and "ved", i.e. the call
is not included in the DOING list unless -popsyscall- is true.]
Jan 29 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- Bug in -Vedthisfilename-, which was causing <ESC> H to hang
on an empty line or line tail, fixed.
Jan 29 (John Williams)
--- Recogniser for single precision decimals, *ISSDECIMAL, added to
autoloadable library.
Jan 27 (Aaron Sloman)
--- New autoloadble library procedure (UNIX only) * SYSFILEINODE.
Given a file name returns the inode number.
Jan 21 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- Environment variable POPSAVELIB moved to $usepop/pop/lib/psv
(previously was $usepop/pop/lib). DOC * SYSSPEC updated.
Jan 19 (John Williams)
--- New non-autoloadable library LIB *INT_PARAMETERS added. This
defines constants POP_MAX_INT and POP_MIN_INT denoting the largest
and smallest simple integers. See REF * NUMBERS for more details.
--- New autoloadable procedure *CONSUNDEF, for constructing undef
records, added to the system. Also, HELP * UNDEF updated.
Jan 12 (John Gibson)
--- The procedure -sys_input_waiting- has replaced -sys_inputon_terminal-
(the latter remains as an autoloadable synonym). Although
-sys_input_waiting- can be applied to any kind of device, it is
particularly intended for use with 'interactive'-type devices (i.e.
terminals and UNIX pipes/VMS mailboxes) to test whether input is
available to read. See HELP *SYS_INPUT_WAITING.
--- A new procedure, -device_os_channel- can be applied to a device record
to obtain the underlying operating system 'channel' number associated with
it (an integer). In Unix, this is the file descriptor; in VMS, the channel
number.
Jan 3 (Aled Morris)
--- -uppertolower- and -lowertoupper- modified to accept words, in
which case a new word is built from the string resulting from
applying the case-converter procedure to the given word's string.
1986
Dec 19 (John Gibson)
--- A bug in sections that caused non-global identifiers associated
with system words (or words locked into the system with
-sys_lock_heap-) to be imported into every section, has been fixed,
from Version 12.4.
--- A bug which prevented autoloading during compilation of variable
initialisation expressions has been fixed. (This used occasionally
to cause spurious syntax errors, e.g. because a macro wasn't
autoloaded.)
Dec 16 (A. Sloman)
--- The built in random number generator used by RANDOM is fast but
does not have a sufficiently uniform distribution for some purposes.
A slower but statistically superior version is available as
LIB *NEWRANDOM. Both are described in LIB *RANDOM
--- Five new non-checking aids to efficiency introduced, one for
words, two for accessing properties and two for lists. They are
FAST_SUBSCRW,
FAST_GET_PROP_ENTRY, FAST_PROP_ENTRY_VALUE,
SYS_GRBG_DESTPAIR, SYS_GRBG_LIST
For details see REF * FASTPROCS
--- A new VED variable VEDREADINTABS, default FALSE, can be set
TRUE, to tell VEDREADIN, the procedure that reads in VED files from
disc, that tabs should be preserved no matter what the value of
VEDNOTABS is. This gets over the problem that it is too late AFTER
the file has been read in to override the default for VEDNOTABS.
If VEDREADINTABS is TRUE, and VEDNOTABS is FALSE, then if the file
read in contains any tabs at all, then VEDNOTABS will be switched to
FALSE for that file, so that the tabs are preserved on output.
(See also HELP * VEDFILETYPES)
Dec 12 (A. Sloman)
--- HELP files updated:
* VALOF, *AUTOLOAD, *POPLIBLIST, *POPUSESLIST
--- LIB PIPEOUT changed to avoid using SYSVFORK even on 4.2Bsd
POPLOG - a source of too many problems
Dec 11 (John Williams)
--- LIB SUBSYSTEM now copes better with VED immedate mode. Doing
<ENTER> IM <filename> now runs POP-11 in a '.p' file, Lisp in a
'.lsp' file, Prolog in a '.pl' file, etc.
Dec 6 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Some documentation files concerned with the POP-11 itemiser,
and compilation have been updated, namely
REF * ITEMISE, HELP * PROGLIST, * INCHARITEM
Dec 1 (Aaron Sloman)
--- TEACH *SCHEMATA replaces HELP SCHEMA and HELP SOMESCHEMA
--- LIB *FINGER improved, and TEACH * FINGER clarified. LIB FINGER
now works interactively in VED.
--- A new collection of facilities linked to *NEWANYPROPERTY:
LIB * VIEWS and LIB * CURRENT_VIEW provide utilities for
manipulating values of objects relative to a context, where contexts
inherit values from ancestors, documented in TEACH * VIEWS and
HELP * VIEWS (See also * SYSHASH, *NEWMAPPING)
An earlier version has been generalised and speeded up.
Nov 30 (John Williams)
--- New autoloadable procedure *ISSTARTSTRING defined
--- Clisp's VED command <ENTER> WIGGLE moved to main autoloadable
library area. See HELP * VED_WIGGLE
--- Two new VM instructions 'sysFIELD_VAL' and 'sysUFIELD_VAL'
introduced. These provide fast access/update to data structure field
values. See REF * VMCODE/sysFIELD_VAL
Nov 27 (Aaron Sloman)
--- VED <ENTER> ?? <name1> <name2> ....
Invokes VED_WHATS to give summary help information on named
identifiers. See HELP * VED_WHAT
--- VED <ENTER> ? <name1> <name2> ....
Invokes VED_WHAT to give very brief help information on named
identifiers. (Format of call only). If only one name given, then
prints information on the VED command line. See HELP * VED_WHAT
--- Moved VEDJUMPTO from library to system. Changed various VED
system procedures to use it.
Nov 22 (John Williams)
--- UNIX only. *SYSGETPASSWDENTRY now accepts user-id numbers, as
well as user names.
Nov 21 (John Gibson) **** VMS ONLY -- IMPORTANT ****
--- For compatibility with Unix POPLOG systems, the VMS version of
SYS_FILE_STAT will, from Version 12.3, return an integer file date
rather than an ASCII string; regrettably, programs using the
procedure will therefore have to be changed. The integer returned
is a Unix date, i.e. a of number seconds since 00:00 January 1 1970;
it can be converted to a VMS-format date string with
SYS_CONVERT_DATE, e.g.
sys_file_stat(filename, vector) -> vector;
sys_convert_date(vector(2), true) -> vector(2)
will give the behaviour of the old SYS_FILE_STAT.
Note that similar remarks apply to SYS_FILE_MATCH, which uses
SYS_FILE_STAT.
Nov 21 (Aaron Sloman and John Gibson)
--- Identifiers defined as "active" from POPLOG V12.3
DLOCAL_PROCESS, DLOCAL_CONTEXT See HELP * DLOCAL, REF * VMCODE*CURRENT_DIRECTORY
(*SYSDIRECTORY is defunct, but remains as a library procedure).
*CURRENT_SECTION*POP_CALLSTACK_LIM - Size of Procedure Calling Stack
(Default 90000)
*POPDEVERR*POPDEVIN*POPDEVOUT*POPDEVRAW
Nov 17 (Aaron Sloman)
--- <ENTER> cdiff - New VED utility for comparing files character by
character, but ignoring tabs, spaces, newlines, etc. See
HELP * CDIFF, *DIFF. (Previously in Sussex local library)
--- *APPLIST and *MAPLIST now have updaters, described in their
help files and in REF *LISTS. (Useful with DLOCAL)
--- HELP *SYSOBEY and *SYSOBEY on VMS were out of date, now
updated. For full details see REF * SYSUTIL.
--- Bug fixed in *VEDGETSYSFILE - a previous change had stopped
it noting the documentation file type in some cases.
--- VED_INDEXIFY used for creating a table of contents and VED_G
used for browsing now copes with headings underlined with hyphens.
See HELP * ENTER_G
Nov 10 (Aaron Sloman - for John Gibson: provisional)
--- POPLOG VERSION 12.3 New features:
1. DLOCAL - specifies 'dynamic local expressions' arbitrary
expressions whose values are to be saved on entry to a procedure
and restored on exit. This makes it possible to specify 'exit
actions' for a procedure - actions to be run no matter whether
the procedure exits normally or abnormally.
2. Active variables - which run procedures when accessed or updated.
These are defined using DEFINE ACTIVE or VARS ACTIVE.
3. Identifier records are now fully supported for use by users; a
new POP-11 syntax word IDENT will produce the identifier
associated with a word, and there are new procedures IDVAL,
IDENTOF, etc for run-time manipulation of identifiers.
See REF *IDENT.
4. processes may be constructed in such a way as not to die when
exited normally.
--- New/revised REF files:
REF * INTVEC REF * WORDS, REF * PROCESS/ABKILL
REF * IDENT, REF * VMCODE/Dynamic* VMCODE/active
REF * VMCODE/dlocal* VMCODE/sysLOCAL*VMCODE/dlocal_context
--- New Help files:
HELP *LEXICAL summarises lexical identifiers
HELP *DLOCAL summaries use of Dynamic Local Expressions
HELP *ACTIVE_VARIABLES
--- Revised HELP files: *IDENTPROPS, *IDENTFIERS, *CONSTANT* SECTIONS, *SYSWORDS
Nov 9 (A. Sloman)
--- HELP * PARAMETERS substantially revised. More nearly complete
now, along with *POPCOMPPATH, *POPSAVEPATH
--- HELP *DEFINE totally re-written.
--- Revised REF files * DATA, * STRINGS, * POPSYNTAX
Nov 5 (A. Sloman)
--- * PLOGHELP * PLOGTEACH and * PLOGSHOWLIB fixed so that they can
work with <ESC> h in documentation files, once loaded.
(See * VEDGETSYSFILE)
--- HELP * STANDARDS describes conventions for online documentation
and library programs
--- HELP * LOGICAL_KEYS describes logical names for VED keys.
Nov 5 (John Williams)
--- The variable *POP_PR_RATIOS, formerly provided by a library
package, has now been incorporated into the POPLOG system core
Nov 5 (Aaron Sloman)
--- HELP * NEWS truncated to include only new items for POPLOG V.13.
Older items in HELP * NEWS.V12 and * NEWS.V11
Nov 5 (John Williams)
--- New hashing procedure * SYSHASH: applied to any POPLOG item it
returns an integer. Designed for use with * NEWANYPROPERTY to build
hash tables mapping complex data-structures to values on the basis
of their contents. Controlled by POP_HASH_LIM
--- New property constructor * NEWMAPPING introduced, for building
hash tables mapping structures into values, using SYSHASH and
* NEWANYPROPERTY with "=" as the equality test.
--- KEYS extended to include a CLASS_HASH field containing a user
updatable procedure used by SYSHASH
Nov 1 (Aaron Sloman)
--- A collection of new utilities for handling mail inside VED has
been installed on Unix versions of POPLOG.
LIB * VED_MAIL and LIB *MAIL for reading new mail in VED.
LIB * VED_SEND a new version with more facilities. See HELP * SEND
LIB * VED_MDIR, * VED_GM - for building and using an index to a Unix
file of saved messages. See HELP * VED_MDIR
LIB * VED_REPLY - for replying to a unix mail message inside VED.
See HELP * VED_REPLY
LIB * VED_MCM - Mark Current Message - in a unix mail file.
LIB * POPHOST has been extended to include a field for the site's
mail name, pophost(sitemailname) used e.g. by VED_REPLY
For an OVERVIEW see HELP *SEND, *VED_MAIL (Unix only)
Oct 31 (Kathryn Seifert)
--- The PROLOG HELP files have been thoroughly revised and updated.
SEE HELP * PLOGNEWS
Oct 25 (Aaron Sloman)
--- VEDALIGNSCREEN altered to ensure that if cursor is near window
boundary, then window moves horizontally to show some context.
--- Two new variables enable users to control VED scrolling within
procedure VEDCHECK (see HELP * VEDPROCS/vedcheck), called by the top
level VED loop. The variables are VEDMAXSCROLLHOR VEDMAXSCROLLVERT,
each capable of having value FALSE, an integer or a procedure.
If the value is FALSE (the default) or FALSE is returned by the
procedure then behaviour is as previously. If value is a procedure
it should return an integer or FALSE when run. The integer value is
used to control scrolling vs refreshing. If the number of lines of
vertical scrolling, up or down, required to make the cursor location
visible is more than the integer value of VEDMAXSCROLLVERT, then
VEDALIGNSCREEN (see HELP * VEDPROCS) is run instead of scrolling.
Similarly for horizontal scrolling and VEDMAXSCROLLHOR. If the value
is FALSE or the procedure returns FALSE then VEDMAXSCROLLVERT
behaves as if the value were vedwindowlength, and VEDMAXSCROLLHOR as
if the value were 10.
If the values are set to 0, then scrolling never occurs. Small
values are useful for big screens on which scrolling is much slower
than refreshing the whole screen.
--- Further cross-references added to various HELP FILES
HELP * PRINT* POPVARS* POPPROCS *CONTENTS * CONTROL* DECIMALS* CLASSES* VEDCOMMS and
REF * SYNTAX* POPSYNTAX* NUMBERS
TEACH files updated with indexes : *PROLOG*LISTSUMMARY*EXPERTS
Oct 13 (John Williams)
--- New VM instruction 'sysSWAP' implemented. Plants code to
interchange two items on the user stack. See REF * VMCODE for more
details.
Oct 12 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- In response to long-standing requests, VEDENTER and
VEDREDOCOMMAND are no longer assigned directly to appropriate keys:
instead they are the default value of two procedure variables,
"vedenterkey" and "vedredokey", which are mapped to key sequences.
The VED configuration and library files for which this has been
done, in addition to the inbuilt configurations for Visual 200 and
VT100 terminals, are as follows:
TVI.P OLDVEDSUN.P L5000.P L4004.P L4000.P EMACS.P
BBCVT100.P BBC.P VT52.P V550.P V55.P V500.P TVI925.P
VEDWYSE.P VEDSUNKEYS_SUNVIEW.P VEDSUNKEYS_NOSUNVIEW.P
VEDREADLINE.P KEYPAD.P
Oct 7 (John Williams)
--- New library package LIB *RANDOM_STATES added.
Oct 4 (Aaron Sloman)
--- HELP * NEWANYPROPERTY updated with example using complex keys.
--- Also updated: HELP * NEWSPARSE, * NEWANYSPARSE, * PROPERTIES,
* NEWPROPERTY, * ARRAYS
Oct 3 (John Williams)
--- New library package LIB *BITVECTORS added.
Sept 30 (Aaron Sloman)
--- LIB * TABIFY and LIB * VED_TABIFY added, to convert spaces to
tabs in a file, controlled by VEDINDENTSTEP. See HELP * TABIFY
Sept 29 (Kathryn Seifert)
--- Auto-loadable macros prolog_vars and prolog_lvars added.
Provides nice syntax for constructing prologvars in POP-11 and
assigning to VARS or LVARS identifiers.
See TEACH * PROLOGINPOP, HELP * PROLOG_VARS, HELP * PROLOG_LVARS.
Sept 21 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- PWM version 1.4 installed. New features include mouse tracking
facilities; raster saving and loading; colour map support; and
invisible windows, as well as several minor fixes/improvements.
See HELP * PWMWINDOWS, * PWMGRAPHICS, * PWM_TRACKMOUSE.
--- LIB * PWMRASTER added for more convenient handling of
bit-images, in a (relatively) future proof manner;
LIB * SUNRASTERFILE added to support these and the PWM filing
functions; see HELP * PWMRASTERS (for both).
Sept 19 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- users can no longer accidentally kill a ved PWM window;
--- a bug under PWM which was manifested by qved'ing to a file
already being edited is fixed;
--- the procedure designated for catching input on a user window can
now be specified by a procedure variable, as well as a procedure;
Sept 18 (Aled Morris)
--- A new variation on the vectors theme added. See REF * INTVEC for
details of a new built-in vectorclass (non-full vectors for holding
signed 32 bit integers) "intvec", and the associated procedures for
constructing, destructing, and subscripting-into them.
Sept 18 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- LIB VEDMICE generalised to provide a mechanism for easy user
recustomisation. See SHOWLIB * VEDMICE
Sept 17 (Aled Morris)
--- New procedure for creating vectors with a user-specified default
slot value. See HELP * INITVECTORCLASS
Sept 16 (Aaron Sloman)
--- HELP * VEDGETSYSFILE enlarged to explain browsing mechanisms
used by <ESC> h, <ESC> n, <ESC> u
--- <ESC> h (See HELP * VEDGETSYSFILE) generalised to cope with
names including file extensions. So HELP * INITIAL.EX, and similar
cross-references should work now.
--- Procedures for <ESC> n and <ESC> u (vednexthelp and
vedprevioushelp) now redefine vedchartype locally in case altered
for LISP etc. This ensures "*" is found. Also bug fixed in
vedprevioushelp - it did not cope with several asterisks on same
line. (See HELP * VEDGETSYSFILE)
Sept 9 (Kathryn Seifert)
--- * PLOGHELP facility extended so that it can accept symbols (e.g.
"+" and "=..") as arguments.
--- PLOGTEACH command added. Will access Prolog teach files when
Prolog not loaded. See HELP * PLOGTEACH.
--- New VED command <ENTER> PLOGSHOWLIB added. Enables access to
Prolog library files irrespective of whether Prolog is loaded. See
HELP * PLOGSHOWLIB for details
Sept 5 (Aaron Sloman)
--- The procedure VEDNOGRAPHICS had been defined to compile a
library file 'vednographics.p'. However the library file was called
'vednographic.p'. The procedure has been changed.
--- CANCEL had been redefined to check for protected words. As a
result some use of CANCEL in libraries stopped working, e.g.
LIB * TVI925 and LIB * VEDWYSE - now fixed.
Aug 31 (Aaron Sloman)
--- TRACE facilities in POP-11 generalised to facilitate
user-defined variants, and to enable the mechanism to be used
for user-defined langauges.
POPTRACEINDENT is a variable with integer variable representing
current depth of tracing.
SYSTRACE_PROC is a user-definable procedure called by SYSTRACE to
effect trace printing.
SYSTRACE_PR is a user-defineable procedure that does the "before"
and "after" printing. It is called by the default SYSTRACE_PROC
If TRACING has the value 1, the syntax words can be traced.
See HELP * TRACE (now much expanded) for details
BUGS in TRACE fixed: updaters of traced procedures work properly now.
Aug 26 (Aled Morris)
--- New version of VED_WHAT installed - now covers most POP-11
procedures. See HELP * VED_WHAT for details
Aug 24 (John Gibson)
--- A serious bug in VAX Version 12 POPLOGs has been uncovered and
fixed. The bug caused references to -lvars- operands after the 32nd
lvar in a procedure to be compiled incorrectly, leading to garbage
results and memory corruption.
Aug 22 (Aaron Sloman) UNIX ONLY
--- VED_IMCSH and related facilities for communicating with CSHELL
process via a pipe made available in Unix SystemV POPLOG as well as
Berkeley Unix POPLOG, since /bin/csh is often available.
(See HELP * IMCSH and HELP * CSH_COMPILE for details)
--- Added versions that work with /bin/sh instead of /bin/csh
See: HELP * IMSH (Immediate Mode SHELL in VED) HELP * CSH_COMPILE
LIB * VED_IMSH LIB * SH_COMPILE LIB * VED_SHFILE LIB * VED_KILLSH
Aug 20 (Ben Rubinstein)
--- Large line numbers (> 9999) on VED Command line no longer cause
problems.
Aug 20 (Aaron Sloman)
--- HELP files expanded/updated: *KEYS, *CLASSES, *CONSKEY
--- LIB * FINDJUNCS (demonstration program) optimised and
generalised as described in comments in the file.
--- HELP * ECHOLOAD updated
Aug 13 (John Williams)
--- POPLOG Version 12.2 released internally, with the features
described below.
Aug 13 (Aled Morris)
--- Some enhancements to the 'external load' facilities have been
added, making it easier to receive floating point results from
external procedure calls. See REF * EXTERNAL for more details
Aug 10 (Aaron Sloman)
--- UNIX ONLY: * SYSGETPASSWDENTRY is a procedure for
interrogating the entry in the password file corresponding to a
user's login name has been generalised. For full details see the
help file, now updated.
--- LIB * SYSGETUSERNAME now uses this. On SUNS it should now work
with YP-network software.
--- HELP * POPPROCS updated
Aug 8 (Aaron Sloman)
--- VMS only: a facility previously available in experimental
undocumented library files now has a help file HELP * DCL_COMPILE
The procedures described therein enable DCL commands to be given
interactively in a VED window, with the results spliced back into
the file. This is analogous to the IMCSH facility available on UNIX
POPLOG systems.
Aug 7 (Aled Morris)
--- New version of -ved_hkey- installed, see HELP *VED_HKEY. It has
been improved to use the updated -ved_what- documentation of VED
procedures. Old -ved_helpkey- has been removed.
Aug 6 (John Williams)
--- A VED command line textual substitution facility, previously
only available at Sussex (as LIB VEDEXPAND) has now been built into
POPLOG. See TEACH *VEDEXPAND for details.
Aug 4 (John Williams)
--- The old Lisp system provided by LIB LISP and associated files
has been removed from POPLOG. This should not affect Common Lisp
users.
July 31 (John Williams)
--- Bug in Prolog that made it impossible to load LIB PROLOG while
running Common Lisp is now fixed.
July 30 (Aled Morris)
--- The redundant VED library file 'buffers.p' has been removed.
It was superceded by VEDFILESELECT.
July 27 (Aaron Sloman)
--- LIB VED_VCALC (VED-based spreadsheet program) re-implemented,
generalised, made more efficient. Help file HELP * VCALC rewritten.
--- HELP files clarified and/or updated:
HELP * WORDS* SYNTAX* ITEM_CHARTYPE (now mentions item_newtype)
* POPPROCS
July 24 (John Williams)
--- New equality operator ==# added. It returns true if its
arguments are identical, or are two numbers of the same type and
value. See REF * NUMBERS for more details. HELP * SYSWORDS updated.
July 20 (Aaron Sloman)
--- HELP * VEDFILETYPES considerably expanded. Other HELP FILES
updated: * INITIAL* INITIAL.EX* VEDNONBREAKFILES* VEDNOTABS* VEDPROCS* VEDVEDDEFAULTS
--- HELP * VEDVARS updated with information about variables
associated with each VED file.
July 16 (Aaron Sloman)
--- REF * FLAVOURS (by Mark Rubinstein) describes the implementation
of the FLAVOURS package
--- REF * POPSYNTAX has been substantially corrected and updated.
July 16 (Richard Bignell)
--- LIB FACETS slightly modified to allow flavours to be loaded in
conjunction with it. Action was sysunprotect("self").
July 10 (Aaron Sloman)
--- previous bugfix in VED caused problem when inserting a character
in long line in 'break' mode. After automatic line break, new
character was inserted in the wrong place. Now fixed.
July 8 (John Williams)
--- Common Lisp Version 0.94 installed. See HELP * LISPNEWS for more
details.
July 2 (John Gibson)
--- Version 12.1 has an improved garbage collector (20-30% faster), which
also fixes the long-standing bug to do with deeply-nested structures. The
symptoms of this bug were that in trying to trace a deeply-nested
structure, e.g. as produced by
repeat conspair(x, x) -> x endrepeat,
the garbage collector fell foul of the Unix-imposed stack limit, and
crashed with an 'Illegal Instruction' error (or something similar). It
now uses only a bounded amount of control stack space, so this will no
longer happen.
June 22 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Various documentation files updated or improved, and references
to SOURCEFILE removed, since system sources are no longer
distributed. Files changed: *LOOPS*NEXTLOOP*QUITIF*QUITUNLESS*SYSCOMPILE*SYSDECLARE*SYSLOOP*SYSLOOPEND*SYSNEED*SYSNMTRY*SYSSTRUCTURE*SYSTRY*SYSTXCOMP*SYSTXSQCOMP*SYSXCOMP*SYSXSQCOMP
New HELP files *NEXTIF*NEXTUNLESS
REF files updated: REF * COMPILE, REF * SYSCOMPILE, REF * SYNTAX
June 13 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Bug in LIB * OUTCHARITEM fixed. A previous edit had stopped it
working.
June 12 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- LIB * MATRIX tidied up and the name of the procedure "boundslist"
has been changed to "bounds_list" to prevent clash with the system
identifier.
June 11 (Aaron Sloman)
--- FOR ... ENDFOR extended to allow simultaneous iteration over
several lists and iteration over structures. New forms allowed:
for V1 V2 ... Vn in L1, L2,...,Ln do <actions> endfor
for V1 V2 ... Vn on L1, L2,...,Ln do <actions> endfor
for <variable> in <structure> using_subscriptor <procedure> do
<actions>
endfor
See HELP * FOR
--- FAST_FOR built into the core system. No longer a library utility.
June 10 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- Further changes to LIB FLAVOURS. See HELP * FLAVOUR_NEWS for
details.
June 9 (John Williams)
--- The POP2 utility LIB GOON has been moved into LIB POP2.
June 2 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- Two changes to LIB FLAVOURS. See HELP * FLAVOUR_NEWS for details.
May 30 (John Williams)
--- The procedures *ALLBUTFIRST and *ALLBUTLAST have been extended to
cope with arguments of any vector type.
--- New improved versions of *UPPERTOLOWER and *LOWERTOUPPER, that
work on strings as well as ASCII codes. See the HELP files for more
details.
May 28 (John Williams)
--- New variable CUCHARTRACE introduced. If non FALSE, its value
should be a character consumer procedure, to which trace output is
sent. See HELP *CUCHARTRACE for more details.
--- Some ancient and now redundant VED utilities have been
withdrawn:
VED_CCP (same as VED_LCP)
VED_CMR (same as VED_LMR)
VED_LP (same as VED_LCP)
The variables VEDDOITFILE and VEDDOITLIMIT, which in fact had no
effect on anything whatsoever, have also been withdrawn.
May 27 (Aaron Sloman)
--- * COPYDATA revised to cope with large numbers, prologvars
and single-level circularity. HELP file updated.
--- VED_TIDY, VED_JCP and related procedures now able to cope with
words like "global" and "constant", and "procedure" in procedure
headers. More fully documented in HELP * MARK.
--- VEDVARSKEYWORDS, used by VED_TIDY made available to users,
initial value [lvars dlvars vars lconstant constant global]
--- Updated files * VEDVARS, * VEDCOMMS, * MARK
May 21 (Aaron Sloman)
--- VEDFILETYPES is a new facility for initialising VED files,
by specifying "condition-action" rules. This supplements
VEDVEDDEFAULTS, and VEDINITFILE. See HELP * VEDFILETYPES
May 20 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Bug in VED character insertion with VEDLEFTMARGIN > 0, which
used to cause looping, now fixed by Colin Shearer.
--- VEDPATHNAME this new variable asscotiated with each VED file
holds the full pathname for the file.
--- VEDEDITOR and VEDGETFILE have been generalised so that instead
of a string they can take a VED file structure as second argument,
e.g. the result of VEDOPEN. See HELP * VEDPROCS
--- RECURSIVE_VALOF - this new procedure can take a word and
recursively gets its VALOF, until the VALOF is not a word.
See HELP * POPPROCS /recursive_valof
May 15 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- An enhanced version of LIB SHOWTREE, for printing tree
structures into the editor buffer, has been installed.
Please see HELP * SHOWTREE for differences.
--- LIB SEETREE provides an interface to SHOWTREE.
See HELP * SEETREE.
May 13 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- LIB GRAPHCHARSETUP now effectively exports the variable
-grapcharsetupdone- and the procedure -Grapcharsetup-.
There is a new user assignable procedure -graphcharsetuptrap-.
See HELP * GRAPHCHARSETUP
--- LIB DRAWLINE and LIB RUBOUT, previously local libraries, now
made public. See HELP * DRAWLINE.
May 11 (John Gibson)
--- A VED bug that caused a text line to be split in the wrong way
when inserting a character in the middle of the line with the left
margin other than 0 is now fixed.
May 7 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- UNIX ONLY. LIB VEDEMACS is a new library which modifies the
terminal and VED's key mappings to simulate the UNIX EMACS editor.
See HELP * VEDEMACS.
May 4 (Aaron Sloman)
--- Maximum number of status-line commands recorded by VED increased
to 60.
--- Errors or interrupts in VED invoking SETPOP used occasionally to
upset cursor behaviour on command line, and could confuse command
file with ordinary VED buffer. Now fixed by extra checks on re-entry
to VED.
--- LIB * ASSOC made faster, and now removes entries assigned the
value FALSE
--- <ENTER> IMCSH, <ENTER> CSHFILE, can have optional file name.
--- HELP files updated:
* ASSOC* NEWASSOC* IMCSH* VECTORCLASS* RECORDCLASS
May 1 (Mark Rubinstein)
--- VMS SYSTEMS. A restriction on the maximum length of the line of
arguments that is read into POPARGLIST when invoking poplog has been
expanded from 128 characters to 256. There is no such restriction
on UNIX systems.
********** FOR EARLIER NEWS ITEMS SEE HELP * NEWS.V12 **********
--- C.all/help/news.v13 ------------------------------------------------
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1987. All rights reserved. ----------