Gforth 1.0

Gforth 1.0 substantially expands the Forth language environment and documents which words are intended to remain stable. Its text interpreter recognizes more literal forms, vocabulary-qualified names, environment-variable substitutions, and concise syntax for values and deferred words; programmers can also extend it with custom recognizers. Development tools add source browsing, word-usage searches, browsable backtraces, stack displays that infer item meanings, and a terminal status line. Major additions include multitasking across cores, synchronized message queues, Cilk-style parallel work, and improved C integration with callbacks. New dictionary sections support nested definitions, while closures, per-task values, configurable word behavior, and template-based definitions extend metaprogramming. The release also reports performance comparable to SwiftForth, with loop optimization and constant folding among the improvements.

The release adds extensive facilities for arithmetic, floating point, stacks, memory access and byte order, strings, Unicode characters, localization, exceptions, control flow, file and directory handling, terminal colors, CSV, regular expressions, structures, user-defined stacks, and GUI development through MINOS2. It also documents older words that are no longer supported as part of the documented interface, recommending replacements where available; many remain in the system but could disappear later. Other changes include interpretive use of the return stack, built-in documentation lookup, forward declarations, quotations, and improved name and wordlist introspection. Gforth EC receives no new development, and users are advised to stay with version 0.7 for that variant. The notes also retain a separate summary of earlier 0.6.2-to-0.7.0 changes, including build and platform requirements, installation improvements, bug fixes, and AMD64, ARM, and Itanium ports.