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HELP NEWS.V14_2 John Williams, Jul 1993 For the most recent news, please see HELP * NEWS. 1992 Oct 5th (Aaron Sloman) --- Two improvements to LIB * NEWPSYS: First, actions of the form [POP11 ....] can now include calls to two new procedures, -psys_eval- and -psys_eval_list-. These are described in HELP * NEWPSYS. Second, LIB NEWPSYS now recognises ^, ^^ and % in actions of the form [POP-11 ...]. Previously they were treated as ordinary words, rather than as a part of the Pop-11 syntax for inserting values into lists. Again, see HELP * NEWPSYS for details. Aug 26 (John Williams) --- Improvement to LIB * FMATCHES: it is now possible to specify restriction procedures whose names are either local to the current section, or lexically scoped. Aug 26 (Adrian Howard) --- The -ved_sourcefile- procedure fixed to stop it printing extra quote marks when -pop_pr_quotes- is true. Aug 25 (Adrian Howard) --- Bug in LIB *NEWC_DEC which caused imported procedures to be placed on the stack fixed. --- Removed bug in -sprintf- which caused it to behave differently from -printf- --- LIB *SHOWTREE now works ok when -pop_pr_quotes- is -true-. Aug 18 (John Williams) --- It is now possible to use the "Home" and "End" keys on an NCD X terminal running (ordinary) VED. See HELP * VEDXTERM (the section entitled 'Special notes for NCD X terminal users') and HELP * NCDXTERMKEYS. Jul 25 (John Gibson) --- The "startup" saved image (included in the standard language commands "pop11", "prolog", "clisp", etc) now has the POPLOG User Interface (PUI) loaded by default. If you don't wish it to be invoked when -sysxsetup- is called (e.g. by pop11 %x), you can assign false to the variable -poplog_ui_enabled- (e.g. in your init.p, etc). --- The "startup" saved image now also has XVed loaded with its Openlook or Motif interface parts by default. To enable it to be run in vanilla mode (i.e no scrollbars, menus, dialogs etc), the application resource "Vanilla" can be set true (in your .Xdefaults, or in your -vedinit- procedure, etc). See REF *XVED. Jul 3 (John Williams) --- Version 14.2. HELP * NEWS split into this file (for V14.1 and V14.2 news), and HELP * NEWS.V14. Jun 30 (John Williams) --- LIB * FORMAT_PRINT bug fixes: the ~E, ~F, ~G, and ~$ directives no longer go into infinite recursion if a line-break occurs within the printed representation of a number. Also, the ~D, ~B, ~O, and ~X directives now work properly if called from the procedure -format_string- (they used to print their argument in reverse if the colon modifier was specified). Jun 12 (Adrian Howard) --- New destroy property added -sys_process_destroy_action- which is cleared in the child process after a -sysfork-. This enables destroy actions to be process specific. See *SYSFORK and *SYS_PROCESS_DESTROY_ACTION for more details. --- New procedure -clear_prop_entries- added. It is functionally the same as -clearproperty- with the addition of clearing the contents of the individual "property entry" data structures in the property. This is only relevant if you use -fast_get_prop_entry- to access the internal structure of a property. Jun 2 (Julian Clinton) --- Various enhancements and bug fixes to the Poplog X User Interface: -- Motif versions of the Help and Library tools and file selector now resize their scrolling lists appropriately when the tools are resized -- OPEN LOOK dialogs can be re-parented -- exit procedures from Poplog via the control panel are now deferred rather than run within the callback (which caused problems under VMS when restarting Poplog) -- HELP *POPLOG_UI added to the main help directory -- an XVed library compatible with PWM *SUNKEYS_SUNVIEW bindings added. See REF *XVED for more information. Jun 1 (Robert Duncan) --- (Unix only) The behaviour of -sys_io_control- when applied to terminal devices has been changed. Previously, -sys_io_control- would recognise terminal -ioctl- requests specially and interpret them relative to the Poplog device parameters, rather than doing the -ioctl- system call. Now, -sys_io_control- always performs the requested -ioctl- call and returns <true> or <false> to indicate its success or failure. To keep the Poplog device parameters in step with the terminal settings, the terminal state is first set from the stored device parameters before the -ioctl- call is made, and then the device parameters are updated from the terminal state after the call has returned. This new behaviour makes it unnecessary to flush the device parameters out to the terminal by making an additional call to -sys_io_control- with a null last argument: the effect of any such existing calls will now be system-dependent, but typically they will return <false> and leave the terminal state unchanged. See REF * sys_io_control. Apr 27 (David Hogg/David Young/John Williams) --- New library LIB * ARRAYFILE added, for storing arrays of integers or floats on disk in a compact form. See HELP * ARRAYFILE. Apr 25 (John Gibson) --- -sys_timer- now takes an additional flag to allow a timer to repeat automatically. See REF *sys_timer. Apr 23 (John Williams) --- New variable -poparg1- added. See REF * poparg1. Apr 21 (John Gibson) --- VED search and substitute strings can now contain all backslash sequences recognised in Pop-11 strings (see REF *ITEMISE). E.g. <ENTER> gs/\St/ / would substitute all 'trailing space' characters in a file with ordinary spaces. You can use character attribute specifications in the substitute string (but note that in the search string they are ignored, i.e. you can't make the search dependent on attributes). E.g. <ENTER> s"foo"\{b}baz" would substitute occurences of word "foo" with "baz" in bold. "@&" in the substitute string is treated as a single character, and is replaced by the matched string with any attributes that currently has, plus any new ones specified on the @& 'character' itself. E.g. <ENTER> s"foo"\[b]@&" would add bold to occurences of "foo". To enable the matched string to be got without its current attributes, "@%" has also been introduced. Thus <ENTER> s"foo"\[b]@%" replaces any existing attributes with bold. Apr 18 (Aaron Sloman) --- VED's family of global search and replace commands has been extended with another "silent" one, i.e. LIB * VED_SGSR. It does not report progress on the status line. See REF * ved_sgsr and compare * ved_sgs and * ved_gsr. Apr 14 (John Gibson) --- The variable -popmemlim- can now have <false> assigned it; this is the same as assigning the largest simple integer. Apr 9 (John Williams) --- New procedure * vedclosebrackets added. Apr 6 (John Williams) --- New procedure -sys_parse_poparglist- added, for parsing Unix-style command line arguments to POPLOG. See REF * SYSTEM. Mar 21 (John Gibson) --- (Sun-4/SPARC POPLOG Only). A serious bug has been fixed in the run-time code generator for Sun-4 POPLOG. For procedures over a certain size, it caused incorrect code to be planted for a -sysGO_ON- instruction (e.g. as generated by a Pop-11 -go_on- statement). This was liable to affect procedures with two or more dlocal expressions (e.g. two or more dlocal active variables), as the internal code generated for this makes use of -sysGO_ON-. Mar 19 (John Williams) --- Two new autoloadable procedures installed: -libwarning- and -syslibwarning-, for printing standard "LOADING LIB" messages. See REF * LIBRARY. Mar 16 (Simon Nichols) --- The autoloadable procedure *DISCAPPEND has been made much more efficient on UNIX. The improvement is particularly noticeable with very large files. Mar 12 (Robert Duncan) --- Improvements to the pretty-printer: -- it now runs considerably faster on large structures, -- takes account of -pop_pr_level- for controlling maximum printing depth (so can be used on circular structures) -- and no longer produces spurious blank lines when printing to -charout-. The pretty-printer can be invoked as procedure -pretty- or by using the pretty-print arrow ==>: see HELP * SYSPRARROW. Mar 9 (John Gibson) Version 14.11 has a number of enhancements to the VED editor, as follows: --- VED is now able to represent a set of mutually-independent display attributes for each character in the buffer. These are Bold font Underline Alternative font (intended for italic) Blink (i.e. flashing) Colour number, 0 - 7 The command ENTER chat (CHange ATtributes) is provided to set and change attributes; this operates on either the current character, word, line or marked range. See 'Changing Character Attributes' in REF *VEDCOMMS. Note that the representation of character attributes in files (see below) means that they CANNOT be used on actual program text, although they can be used inside program comments. The way in which attributes will display on the screen is (needless to say) terminal-dependent. This is controlled for a particular screen by the (variable) active variable -vedscreencharmode-, which has standard settings for XVed, VT100-compatible terminals (including xterm), and VT52-type terminals. (If in doubt as to the set of attributes on a particular character, the command ENTER cc can be used to display them symbolically -- see REF *ved_cc.) When written to a file, character attributes are encoded by inserting extra non-printing control characters. This means that files will print in a sensible way, but the only attributes that will show up are underline and alternative font (both of which print as underlining). See 'File Management' in REF *VEDPROCS for more details. --- To enable VED to represent attributes in buffer strings, integer character values have been extended to 24 bits, and a new datatype has been introduced to allow display characters (i.e. characters-with-attributes) to be stored and retrieved -- this is the 'dstring' (Display string). See the sections 'Overview' and 'Display Strings' in REF *STRINGS. The procedures -vedcurrentchar- and -vedrepeater- behave as before in that they still return only the character-code parts of buffer characters. There are now alternate procedures -vedcurrentdchar- and -veddrepeater- for dealing with display characters. --- The old mechanism for representing graphics characters in VED has been superseded. Rather than treating any 8-bit character code as a graphics character, VED now defines a standard set of 8-bit codes (in the range 16:81 - 16:92) to represent the line-drawing characters plus a few other useful ones. See 'VED Standard Graphics Characters' in REF *VEDPROCS. These standard codes are converted appropriately when output to the screen by the terminal-dependent procedure -vedscreengraphtrans-. Each character has an ordinary character defined as its default substitute when displayed on a screen which does not support graphics characters. Like character attributes, graphics characters are converted to sequences containing non-printing control characters when written to a file. This causes them to print as their default substitute characters. Because the codes are standardised, it is no longer necessary to have a set of variables containing the code for each character (as was the case with the old -graphcharsetup-). The new standard codes can instead be notated as 'backslash' sequences in Pop-11 character constants and strings (see 'Backslash in Strings & Character Constants' in REF *ITEMISE). In addition, the VED command ENTER ic can be used to insert graphics characters directly into a VED buffer (see REF *ved_ic). A further benefit of this scheme over the old one is that it frees up the character-code range 16:A0 - 16:FF, allowing use of the 8-bit ISO Latin 1 character set. There is now direct support for this in the procedures -isuppercode-, -islowercode-, -uppertolower-, etc which will all recognise alphabetic characters from Latin 1 when the variable -pop_character_set- has the value (ASCII character) `1`. (See 'Character Sets' in REF *STRINGS.) This variable is also what stops the interpretation of the old-style graphics characters by VED, which can now only happen when -pop_character_set- is false. However, its default value is `1`, which means that two (now redundant) facilities are obliged to set it false if they are used, namely o The old lib graphcharsetup. o The old 'vedset graphic ...' form. This is no longer necessary in the sense that the variables (such as -vedscreencontrolmark-) set by it now have terminal-independent standard graphics codes as their default values. However, since these variables can (and do) now contain characters-with-attributes, a new form, 'vedset chars ...' has been introduced instead, to allow users to tailor them if desired. See HELP *VEDSET. The complete set of variables that can be set with vedset chars ... is described in 'Special Character Variables' in REF *VEDVARS. (Note that nothing in the standard POPLOG system now uses either -graphcharsetup- or vedset graphic ....) --- VED is now able to cope properly with files containing trailing spaces at the end of lines. If -vedreadintrailspaces- is true, then when read in, an end-of-line space is substituted with a 'trailing space' character. Such a character can also be inserted manually into a buffer with ENTER ic, and when written to a file is translated back to an ordinary space. See 'VED Special Space Characters' in REF *VEDPROCS. In addition, VED no longer strips trailing tabs from lines when writing a file. (However, ENTER tabify can now take a '-strip' argument to say strip trailing tabs/spaces from each line.) --- Two new procedures, -vedfile_line_repeater- and -vedfile_line_consumer-, have been introduced to allow flexible processing of VED-format files. These also use the new variables -vedreadinplain- and -vedwriteoutplain- respectively, which control their default actions in respect of the control characters used to represent attributes in files, etc. See REF *VEDPROCS. --- The introduction of VED character attributes and graphics characters has one unfortunate side-effect: it will represent a problem for users who wish to use editors other than VED to examine POPLOG files. As mentioned above, when written to a file, VED translates both attributes and graphics characters to sequences containing non-printing control characters. However, when read into another editor, these extra control characters will not only not receive their VED interpretation, they will be explicitly displayed. Thus files containing these will come out looking rather unpleasant. (As of this moment, there is no use of either attributes or graphics characters in any POPLOG files, but this situation will soon change: documentation (and probably comments in program files) will gradually begin to make use of them.) To allow some way for other editors to access sensible (if impoverished) versions of files, a library program -stripvedfile- is therefore provided; this can be run as shell/DCL command pop11 stripvedfile [ -o <outfile> ] <file> etc. It reads a VED file <file> and outputs it as plain text (with all extra control characters removed) to the standard output (or <outfile> if -o supplied). See SHOWLIB *STRIPVEDFILE. NOTE that, in an X environment, it is perfectly possible to run XVed in tandem with another editor. Thus even if you don't wish to use XVed for your general editing, you still have the option of using it for the more limited purpose of viewing POPLOG documentation, etc. --- The variable -vedstatusheader- is no longer used by VED. This string was formerly used as the start of the status line (including space for the line number of the current file). VED now creates the status line display directly from the variables -vedscreenstatus_-_mark- et al (see 'Special Character Variables' in REF *VEDVARS). However, -vedstatusheader- remains as an autoloadable file which creates a string of the appropriate length, providing upward compatibility for programs that use datalength(vedstatusheader) to get the length (which is always 9). Feb 27 (John Williams) --- The procedure -vedgetsysfile- (normally assigned to the VED key sequence esc-h) now ignores hyphens around an identifier (e.g. -hd-) Feb 21 (Simon Nichols) --- Fixes and improvements to LIB *DEBUGGER (the Pop11 source-level debugger): A bug has been fixed which caused problems when a saved image containing the debugger was made with -sys_lock_system-. The "skip" and "next" commands now work correctly in all circumstances. A "quit" command has been added, which quits the debugger command loop, returning to either a previous invocation of the debugger or to the Pop11 top level. This works even if the debugger was invoked via the syntax work -debugger- (i.e., you are no longer forced to supply a matching -enddebugger-). The new "inspect" command invokes the Pop11 structure browser on the value of a given variable (see HELP *INSPECT). The "print" command now takes multiple arguments. When a breakpoint is encountered, the debugger now prints location information (file name and line number). Finally, the "where" command has been made more informative when used outside of VED. Feb 13 (John Williams) --- REF * DOCUMENTATION added. This describes the procedures and variables used to implement POPLOG's online documentation system. Feb 06 (John Williams) --- New REF files added: REF * ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES (Unix only) REF * LOGICAL_NAMES (VMS only) Feb 06 (Adrian Howard) --- LIB *MAKE_INDEXES added --- a facility for automatically producing indexes for a Poplog directory tree. See HELP *MAKE_INDEXES Jan 22 (John Williams) --- UNIX ONLY New procedure -sys_dir_size- added (like Shell 'du'). See REF * sys_dir_size 1991 Dec 28 (John Gibson) --- The XpwScrollText widget used for XVed windows now automatically handles drawing of the graphics characters used by VED and LIB *SHOWTREE. This means you can use any fixed-width font for XVed, regardless of whether it supports graphics characters or not. Dec 5 (John Williams) New VED command <ENTER> SHOWLIBS added. See HELP * SHOWLIBS. Dec 3 (John Williams) LIB * COPYDATA now copies arrays, as well as records and vectors. Nov 28 (John Williams) LIB * MKREFINDEX has been modified so that it is possible to re-define the procedure used to process each REF file. This facility may later be used to provide an indexing program for POP-11 source files. See HELP * MKREFINDEX. *********** For earlier news please see HELP NEWS.V14_1 ************ --- C.all/help/news.v14_2 --- Copyright University of Sussex 1993. All rights reserved.