-Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes. 2 Aug 1996 -*- text -*-
-Copyright (C) 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes. -*- text -*-
+Copyright (C) 1996, 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.
Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@prep.ai.mit.edu.
\f
-Guile 1.0b3
+Changes in Guile 1.1 (Sun 5 Jan 1997):
+
+* Changes to the distribution.
+
+The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
+pieces:
+guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
+guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
+ Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
+ is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
+guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
+ expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
+ programming language. These are packaged together because the
+ Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
+
+We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
+date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
+will distribute it.
+
+* Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
+
+** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
+Shivers' Scheme Shell.
+
+In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
+exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
+stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
+the (command-line) function.
+ -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
+ -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
+ -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
+
+The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
+ -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
+ -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
+ command line arguments
+ -ds do -s script at this point
+ --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
+ -h, --help display this help and exit
+ -v, --version display version information and exit
+ \ read arguments from following script lines
+
+So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
+which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
+
+#!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
+!#
+(define (main args)
+ (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
+ (cdr args))
+ (newline))
+
+(main (command-line))
+
+Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
+
+ ekko a speckled gecko
+
+Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
+token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
+following list of command-line arguments:
+
+ ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
+
+Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
+the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
+with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
+defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
+remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
+
+* Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
+
+** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
+system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
+all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
+supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
+libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
+
+Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
+it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
+independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
+
+** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
+
+To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
+-lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
+autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
+following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
+your link command:
+
+### Find quickthreads and libguile.
+AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
+AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
+
+* Changes to Scheme functions
+
+** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
+returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
-User-visible changes since Thursday, September 5:
+ Component Accessor Setter
+ ========================= ============ ============
+ seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
+ minutes tm:min set-tm:min
+ hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
+ day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
+ month tm:mon set-tm:mon
+ year tm:year set-tm:year
+ day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
+ day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
+ daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
+ GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
+ name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
+** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname'.
+ Component Accessor
+ ============================================== ================
+ name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
+ network name of this machine utsname:nodename
+ release level of the operating system utsname:release
+ version level of the operating system utsname:version
+ machine hardware platform utsname:machine
+
+** There is now a complete set of accessors for the vectors returned
+by the `getserv'
+
+** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
+string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
+in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
+unspecified value.
+
+** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
+given to Guile, as a list of strings.
+
+When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
+script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
+`-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
+behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
+command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
+
+** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
+in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
+mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
+but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
+
+** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
+argument.
+
+** gethost, getproto, and getnet, and getserv now return more helpful
+error codes.
+
+* Changes to the gh_ interface
+
+** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
+evaluation
+
+** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
+array
+
+** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
+and returns the array
+
+** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
+null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
+the user to interpret the data both ways.
+
+* Changes to the scm_ interface
+
+** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
+process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
+stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
+the Scheme shell).
+
+To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
+linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
+of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will adding
+any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
+argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
+generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
+command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
+interpreter" above.
+
+** [[new: scm_usage_name, scm_shell_usage, scm_compile_shell_switches]]
+
+** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
+expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL.
+
+* Changes to documentation
+
+** the $(srcdir)/newdoc hierarchy now contains a new approach to the
+manuals. The approach, recommended by Jim Blandy, is to have: (*) a
+tutorial with the pedagogical style of guile-user, and a non-dry
+reference manual in the style of the most excellent GNU libc reference
+manual: the reference manual should be complete, but at the same time
+it should have an introductory screen for each major topic, which can
+be referenced if the user goes "up" a level in the info documentation.
+
+\f
+Guile 1.0b3
+
+User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
+(Sun 5 Jan 1997):
* Changes to the 'guile' program:
** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
-file.
+file.
** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
\f
Copyright information:
-Copyright (C) 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 1996,1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
under the above conditions, provided also that they
carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
+\f
+Local variables:
+mode: outline
+paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
+end:
+