HELP V14_2.CHANGES John Williams, Jul 1992
Updated: Adrian Howard, Aug 1992
This file provides a brief overview of some of the more important new
facilities provided in POPLOG Version 14.2. This file is organised by
topic, unlike HELP *NEWS, which is organised by date (latest first) and
includes most of the information presented below, sometimes with more
detail.
CONTENTS - (Use <ENTER> g to access required sections)
-- The "startup" Saved Image
-- POP-11
-- ... Display Strings
-- ... Properties
-- ... Improvements To POP-11 Printing Procedures
-- ... Improvements To LIB *DEBUGGER
-- ... Miscellaneous
-- LISP
-- Prolog
-- VED
-- ... General New VED Facilities
-- ... New Graphics Facilities In VED
-- Changes To The POPLOG/X Interface
-- ... General Improvements To The X Interface
-- ... XVed
-- ... The POPLOG User Interface
-- Changes To The POPLOG/Operating System Interface
-- New Documentation-- The "startup" Saved Image ------------------------------------------
The "startup" saved image (included in the standard language commands
"pop11", "prolog", "clisp", etc) now has the POPLOG User Interface
(PUI) loaded by default. For information on the PUI see HELP *POPLOG_UI.
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" image also has XVed loaded with its OPEN LOOK or Motif
interface parts by default. For information on XVed see HELP *XVED. To
enable it to be run in "vanilla" mode (i.e no scrollbars, menus, dialogs
etc), the application resource "Vanilla" can be set false (in your
.Xdefaults, or in your -vedinit- procedure, etc).
-- POP-11 --------------------------------------------------------------- ... Display Strings ------------------------------------------------
# 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 for more information. Also see the section on 'VED' later
in this file.
-- ... Properties -----------------------------------------------------
# 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 *SYS_PROCESS_DESTROY_ACTION.
# 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.
-- ... Improvements To POP-11 Printing Procedures ---------------------
# 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).
# The pretty-printer has been improved so that it now runs considerably
faster on large structures, and takes account of -pop_pr_level- for
controlling maximum printing depth (which means it can be used on
circular structures). Also, it no longer produces spurious blank lines
when printing to -charout-.
# A bug in -sprintf- which caused it to behave differently from -printf-
in certain situations has been removed.
# LIB *SHOWTREE now works correctly when -pop_pr_quotes- is -true-.
-- ... Improvements To LIB *DEBUGGER ----------------------------------
The following improvements have been made to the Pop-11 source code
debugger, LIB *DEBUGGER.
# 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).
# When a breakpoint is encountered, the debugger now prints
location information (file name and line number).
# 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.
# The "print" command now takes multiple arguments.
# Finally, the "where" command has been made more informative
when used outside of VED.
-- ... Miscellaneous --------------------------------------------------
# Improvement to LIB * FMATCHES: it is now possible to specify
restriction procedures whose names are either local to the current
section, or lexically scoped.
# The procedure -sys_parse_string- now takes an optional boolean
argument which controls whether numbers are converted with -strnumber-.
# New procedure -sys_parse_poparglist- added, for parsing Unix-style
command line arguments to POPLOG. See REF *SYSTEM.
# New variable -poparg1- added. See REF *poparg1.
# LIB *NEWC_DEC no longer leaves imported procedures on the stack.
# A standard vector class with element type "exptr" is provided for.
This has dataword "exptrvec", and is defined simply by
defclass exptrvec :exptr;
which gives all the usual procedures for a vector class. See
REF *EXTERNAL_DATA
# The key of external pointers is now contained in -external_ptr_key-.
# The procedure -sys_timer- now takes an additional flag to allow a
timer to repeat automatically. See REF *sys_timer.
# The variable -popmemlim- can now have <false> assigned to it; this is
the same as assigning the largest simple integer.
# DEFV now words with section pathnames.
# The -class_attribute- procedure can now take a single key as an
argument, returning a list of attributes which when given to -conskey-
would reproduce the key.
# New procedure -set_subvector- which sets N components of a given
vector to a given POP-11 item.
# New library LIB *ARRAYFILE added. This enables integer arrays to be
stored on disk in a compact form. See HELP *ARRAYFILE.
# Two new autoloadable procedures installed: -libwarning- and
-syslibwarning-, for printing standard "LOADING LIB" messages. See
REF *LIBRARY.
# The procedure -copydata- now copies arrays, as well as records and
vectors.
# LIB *MAKE_INDEXES added --- a facility for automatically producing
indexes for a POPLOG directory tree. See HELP *MAKE_INDEXES
# 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.
-- LISP ---------------------------------------------------------------
# New VED key binding: the key sequence <ESC> ) closes off all
outstanding opening brackets at the end of a Lisp expression. See HELP
*LISPVED.
# New module PROFILE added. This provides a Lisp interface to the POPLOG
profiling tool. See HELP * PROFILE for details.
# The Lisp compiler now recognises (but does not yet act upon) (OPTIMISE
COMPILATION-SPEED) declarations.
# New accurate version of ISQRT. The previous version made some
intermediate floating point calculations.
# FORMAT bug fix: the ~E, ~F, ~G, and ~$ directives no longer go into
infinite recursion if a line-break occurs within the printed
representation of a number.
# Bug in DECODE-UNIVERSAL-TIME fixed: it used to produce dates like
March 32nd, April 31st, etc.
# The #b, #o, and #x reader macros now interpret signed numbers
correctly.
-- Prolog -------------------------------------------------------------
# A new library LIBRARY * HIGHER_ORDER has been added. This library
defines some higher-order predicates which operate on lists and on the
arguments of terms. In particular, it defines the useful maplist/2 and
maplist/3.
For practical purposes, a higher-order predicate is one which takes as
arguments a predicate and some structured data, and applies the
predicate to each component of the data.
These higher-order predicates are efficient as they have been defined in
terms of the new call/N family of predicates (see below).
See PLOGHELP * HIGHER_ORDER for details.
# The call/1 built-in predicate has been augmented by a whole family of
predicates call/N (for all N > 0). In general, call/N invokes a goal
formed from its arguments: the first argument is either an atom standing
for a predicate name or a term representing a "closure" (i.e., a
predicate with one or more "frozen" arguments), and this is applied to
the remaining N - 1 arguments.
The practical benefit is that a term representing the goal to be called
does not have to be constructed, which is the case when only call/1 is
available.
The call/N family is implemented efficiently: there is an almost
negligible overhead in using them, compared with invoking a goal
directly in the body of a clause. There is thus no longer any efficiency
barrier to defining and using "higher-order" predicates, such as
maplist/2 and maplist/3, providing they are defined in terms of the
appropriate call/N predicate.
See PLOGHELP * CALL for details.
# New predicates format/1 and format/2 can be used for formatting
output. See PLOGHELP * FORMAT.
# setof/3 and bagof/3 have been extended to allow existential
quantification anywhere within the goal being evaluated. So for example,
the following two goals are now equivalent:
?- setof(X, (Y^p(X,Y), Z^q(X,Z)), S).
?- setof(X, Y^Z^(p(X,Y), q(X,Z)), S).
As a consequence, the existential quantifier ^/2 is now evaluable in its
own right, with the interpretation:
_ ^ G :- G .
# findall/3 has been built in to the system, making the findall library
redundant. See PLOGHELP * FINDALL.
# fast_bagof/3 has been redefined in terms of findall/3, as follows:
fast_bagof(X, P, B) :-
findall(X, P, B),
B \== [].
This does cause a change in behaviour: any solutions in B will be in the
natural (database) order where previously they were returned in
*reverse* order. This was always a mistake: the change means that now
findall/3, bagof/3 and fast_bagof/3 all return solutions in the same
order.
Given the trivial nature of the above definition, and the equally
trivial:
fast_setof(X, P, S) :-
findall(X, P, B),
B \== [],
sort(B, S).
use of these highly non-standard predicates is deprecated in favour of
the standard findall/3.
# It is no longer necessary for prolog_error/2 to have a final
"catch-all" clause which traps any error: errors not catered for
explicitly now get passed automatically to prolog_syserror/2. See
PLOGHELP * PROLOG_ERROR for details.
# Run-time error-handling is now disabled during calls to prolog_error/2
to avoid problems with infinite error loops. A new predicate
prolog_error_handling/1 allows explicit re-enabling of the error handler
where necessary.
See PLOGHELP * PROLOG_ERROR for details.
# New predicates spy_action/1 and spy_action/2 can be used to change the
behaviour of the spy debugger: see PLOGHELP * SPY_ACTION. leash/1 and
unleash/1 are now defined in terms of these.
# New VED commands:
<ENTER> spy [spec]
<ENTER> nospy [spec]
allow for adding and removing spy-points from the command line. The
optional argument has the same form as that expected by the
corresponding predicates spy/1 and nospy/1.
# spy/0 no longer places spy-points on predicates whose names begin
'prolog_'. Such predicates can still be spied, but must be named
explicitly.
# LIB *SLOWPROCS has been fixed so it no longer alters the behaviour of
programs which use fast_setof/3 and fast_bagof/3
-- VED ----------------------------------------------------------------
-- ... General New VED Facilities -------------------------------------
# New VED command <ENTER> SHOWLIBS added. See HELP *SHOWLIBS.
# 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.
# New procedure *vedclosebrackets added.
# The procedure *vedgetsysfile (normally assigned to the VED key
sequence ESC-h) now ignores hyphens around an identifier (e.g. -hd-).
# New procedures -vedconvertline- and -vedconvertrange- which operate
line -vedconvertword- on sequences of lines and marked ranges.
# New procedure -veddrawline- for drawing lines between two points in a
VED buffer.
# 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.
# LIB * VED_SOURCEFILE now classes files as "lib" or "src"
appropriately. Also, new user-assignable procedure -vedsrcfiledefaults-
defined by LIB * VED_SOURCEFILE.
-- ... New Graphics Facilities In VED ---------------------------------
# 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.
# 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 new standard codes can instead be noted 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.)
# 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). See HELP *TABIFY.
# Two new procedures, -vedfile_line_repeater- and
-vedfile_line_consumer-, have been introduced to allow flexible
processing of VED-format files. These 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 LIB *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).
# VED search and substitute strings can now contain all backslash
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 occurrences 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 occurrences 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.
-- Changes To The POPLOG/X Interface ------------------------------------ ... General Improvements To The X Interface ------------------------
# The XpwScrollText widget has been extended to support:
i) Direct drawing of the graphic characters used by VED
ii) Support for upto four fonts.
iii) Support for upto eight foreground/background combinations on
screen at the same time.
iv) Support for bold, underlined, and flashing text.
For details see REF *XpwScrollText.
# The XpwScrollText widget has a new resource XtNnoGrayScale which
controls whether GrayScale displays will be treated as StaticGray
displays.
# LIB *RC_GRAPHIC can now draw rounded rectangles with -rc_draw_oblong-
# The "input" resource of a LIB *RC_GRAPHIC window is now controlled by
the -rc_wm_input- variable (see HELP *RC_GRAPHIC.)
# Support for multiple Toolkit versions has been added via the variable
-XLINK_VERSION-. See HELP *X and HELP *NEWPOP.
# Support for OpenWindows 3.0 has been added.
# New keyboard handling library LIB *XT_KEYBOARD has been added. See
REF *XT_KEYBOARD.
# The procedure -XpwStackColorRangeInfo- has been added to the
XpwGraphic widget library. It fetches the same information as
-XpwColorRangeInfo- without creating a vector. See
REF *XpwStackColorRangeInfo for more information.
# The procedure -XptCheckWindowedWidget-, which checks if a widget has
an associated window, has been added to LIB *XPT_TYPECHECK. For details
see REF *XptCheckWindowedWidget.
# The procedure -XGetGCValues- has been added to LIB *XGraphicsContext.
See REF *XGetGCValues for details.
# The procedure -XCloseDisplay- has been added to LIB *XHouseKeeping.
See REF *XCloseDisplay for details.
# The X interface now behaves reasonably after a -sysfork-. All the
displays and application contexts in the child process are closed. X
processing can only continue in the same process a display was opened
in.
# Non-POPLOG callbacks can now be removed with -(fast_)XtRemoveCallback-
and -(fast_)XptRemoveCallbackList-.
# In LIB *PROPSHEET -propsheet_show- and -propsheet_hide- now work
correctly for imported property boxes.
# The procedure -XptDefaultSetup- now behaves correctly if it cannot
open a display. Also, if -XptDefaultDisplay- contains a string when
-XptDefaultSetup- is called, the string is used as the name of the
display to be opened.
# The -(fast_)XptValue- procedures are now re-entrant and can safely be
used in callback procedures.
# Many minor bugs fixed --- see HELP *XNEWS for full information.
-- ... XVed -----------------------------------------------------------
# Several new window settings have been added relating to the new VED
character attributes. XVed now supports up to four fonts and eight
simultaneous foreground/background colour combinations. In addition to
this there is the capability for underlined, bold, and flashing text.
For more information see REF *XVed
# 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.
# A new XVed application setting BellVolume which allows you to change
the volume of the beep produced by -vedscreenbell- (if possible.)
# Two new application settings in XVed (DialogBackground and
DialogForeground) can be used to alter the foreground and background
colours of XVed specific dialog boxes. See *DialogForeground for more
information.
# The XVed menubar and scrollbar colours can now be set dynamically from
within XVed via window settings. See *menubarForeground and
*scrollbarForeground for more information.
# A new XVed application setting *Vanilla has been added to suppress the
menubars and scrollbars when using Motif or OPEN LOOK.
# A New XVed application setting *ShowFileName controls whether the
filename of the current VED buffer is shown on the status line.
# An XVed library compatible with PWM *SUNKEYS_SUNVIEW bindings added.
See REF *XVED.
# The -xved_value- procedure can now update multiple settings with one
call by supplying a list of keys.
# Selection of lines in XVed now works correctly when the left margin
has been changed.
-- ... The POPLOG User Interface --------------------------------------
# Motif versions of the Help and Library tools and file selector now
resize their scrolling lists appropriately when the tools are resized.
# 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 moved to the main help directory.
# OPEN LOOK dialogs can be re-parented.
-- Changes To The POPLOG/Operating System Interface -------------------
# (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.
# (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-.
# (Unix only) The autoloadable procedure *DISCAPPEND has been made much
more efficient on Unix. The improvement is particularly noticeable with
very large files.
# (Unix only) The -pipeout- procedure can now take a reference
containing a procedure as its CHAR_SOURCE argument. The procedure will
be used to write the data to the pipe.
# (Unix only) New procedure -sys_dir_size- added (like Shell 'du'). See
REF *sys_dir_size.
-- New Documentation --------------------------------------------------
# New REF files added:
REF *DOCUMENTATION
REF *ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES (Unix only)
REF *LOGICAL_NAMES (VMS only)
REF *POP_UI (after "uses popxlib" only)
REF *XT_KEYBOARD (after "uses popxlib" only)
LISP REF *REFFILES
# New HELP files added:
HELP *ARRAYFILE
HELP *MAKE_INDEXES
HELP *NEWS.V14
HELP *POPARCHIVE
HELP *V14_2.CHANGES
LISP HELP *PROFILE
PLOGHELP *FORMAT
PLOGHELP *HIGHER_ORDER
PLOGHELP *SPY_ACTION
# New TEACH files added:
TEACH *PAIRS
--- C.all/help/v14_2.changes
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1992. All rights reserved. ----------