Release 2008.09.21

Major changes in this release

• Support for loading code from a normal text file
  This only works for console implementation
  Use ./ngaro --with filename
• Improved screen clearing
  Trying to display a negative character code clears the display.
  This allows a cleaner, more portable way of clearing the display without relying on particular escape sequences being emulated.
• Console source trees merged
• Cleanups to I/O handling in the console implementation
• Curses-backend used for console implementation by default

The most significant of these is the addition of --with to the console implementation.

The binary package will be updated within the next few days.

Release 2008.06.29

This is a minor update with the updated word class handling (so you can try code from my previous posts) and a few minor fixes and improvements to the source. I've also updated the online interpreter to use both the latest Ngaro.js and image.

Retro on Windows

Retro has been supported on Windows for a few weeks now. My access to Windows has been very limited, but I finally have a working XP install on my main development box.

I'll be revising the Windows Build Instructions later today, to help clarify a few points and point out the exact files I'm using. In addition, I've built a new installable package for Retro 10. This is a standard MSI package, so should install on XP and Vista machines without problems. It includes all necessary dependencies. I expect to replace the binary package on retroforth.org with this later this week.

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).

Retro on Mobile Devices

I have scaled down the UI elements in Ngaro JS and am now able to run Retro on some mobile devices.

I have confirmation that it works properly on (platform, browser):

• Windows Mobile 5 (Minimo)
• Apple iPhone (Mobile Safari)

You can check out Retro Mobile online, or download the files to copy to your device for offline use.

Links:

• Retro Mobile (http://retroforth.org/mobile)
• Download Retro Mobile (zip, http://retroforth.org/mobile/mobile.zip)
• Download Retro Mobile (tar.gz, http://retroforth.org/mobile/mobile.tar.gz)
  
• Minimo (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/)

Image Builder

As mentioned in my post on the 2008.04.26 release, I am working on an online image builder.

I have finished a quick prototype. It will allow you to select from the majority of the modules that are included in the latest release and build an image including them. This does not save images for long, so download quickly. (The download will be replaced by the next image that is built.)

The image builder will also provide a copy of the image map and the build log. It does not build the image for Ngaro JS yet.

Give it a try.

Release 2008.04.26

From this point on, I'm going to try to do a release at the end of any week that sees improvements to the Retro codebase.

This week brings a couple of minor changes and improvements:

• Ngaro JS now included in the package
• A tool (in Toka) to build an image.js for Ngaro JS
  (This does not work properly on 64-bit systems, I'll try to fix in the next week or two)
  
• A new (remap-keys) hook has been added to allow alteration of the values returned by key before they can be processed by other words
• New whitespace module, which uses (remap-keys) to convert TAB, CR, and LF to SPACE
• retro.config renamed to extensions
  
• Minor cleanups to start organizing the modules
  

My short term plans are to finish organizing the module sources, and to put up an online tool for building a custom forth.image without requiring anything other than a web browser.

Possible change to 'key'

As mentioned by Snoopy42 on #retro, the Retro 10 system has been ignoring any whitespace separators other than space. Since this can be a problem, I've modified key to convert other whitespace forms (return, tab) into spaces. I'm not sure I like this, so stay tuned.