Saturday, May 10, 2008

Release 2008.05.10

This is a pretty small release. I've been very busy (and a bit sick), so haven't had time to do much.
  • The video refresh port is now set properly after outputting a character
  • Ngaro JS now supports the video refresh port
  • Ngaro JS now stores the video output apart from the form output textarea
  • Strings are now rendered after all characters are drawn to the video buffer rather than character by character
  • update (enable/disable screen redraws) was added
  • redraw (redraw the screen if update is on) is now in the dictionary
  • Graphics module now does video updates after drawing shapes
  • Removed the FFI from Toka.
As shown, most of my time has been spent in enabling proper use of the video refresh support provided by Ngaro. This allows a noticeable performance increase in bits that are text heavy (try words) by delaying renders until the output is finished. It's also helpful with graphics, allowing filled shapes to be rendered more quickly.

I also removed the FFI functionality from Toka for this release. The FFI words are not used by the cross-compiler, and serves only to slow down the build of Toka and increase the number of dependencies. (This only affects the copy of Toka included in the Retro package; the full Toka still has FFI).

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