* Xemacs 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor" is released. Xemacs 21.4.0 contains a large number of improvements and extensions to the current stable version, XEmacs 21.1.14, and continues the policy of maintaining compatibility with the mainline GNU Emacs in the Lisp programming language and packages. XEmacs 21.4.0 includes two major new features: o "Native widgets" are supported on windowing platforms ("plain" X11, Motif, MS Windows, and GTK+). GUI components, as simple as buttons or as complex as a MS Windows file selector, can be incorporated in XEmacs user interfaces. The programming interface treats them as a subtype of the primitive Lisp glyph type, the fundamental API for handling images and displaying text in XEmacs. o The GTK+ toolkit is supported for X11. This includes the GNOME widget set and the advanced GUI design toolkit, libglade. GTK+ is considered experimental in the 21.4 series, and will not be built in by default. It is not yet fully integrated with the "native widget" support, and improvements are constrained to minimize impact on the rest of XEmacs. GTK+ is quite functional, but still unstable, and developers interested in working on GTK+ support probably should concentrate on the development series (version 21.5). A few examples of other significant new features include: o Extended database support, including improvements to the LDAP and Berkeley DB support, and new wrappers for Postgresql and Berkeley DB version 3. o Support for EsounD. o Better support for MS Windows, including printer support and a new "net installer". Standard Windows-style installers (Wise and Installshield) are planned for integration in 21.4.x updates. For more information about user-visible changes, see etc/NEWS (the definitive source), and the release page, http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/Public-21.2/. For general information about XEmacs, the developers, and the user community, see our home page, http://www.xemacs.org/. * XEmacs 21.4.0 is "gamma" software. Besides the usual "no warranty" disclaimer (see etc/WARRANTY, sections 10 and 11), we are now experimenting with a level of stability intermediate between "beta" and "stable", dubbed "gamma". At this point all the developers and most of our beta testers trust the 21.4 code base with all their editing needs. However, we recognize that (a) these users are not fully representative of the user community, (b) there is a "point oh" effect, and (c) there have been personnel changes (not least, an inexperienced release manager). For all these reasons, for users who absolutely must minimize risk, we continue to recommend the 21.1 series. However, almost users will get very high reliability from XEmacs 21.4, and in return, access to many new features and improved functionality. No new destabilizing code will be added; each release in the 21.4 series should be strictly more stable and bug-free than the preceding one. We also recommend the 21.4 series to distribution packagers (such as Linux distributions and the open source BSD "ports" or "packages" maintainers) for their "testing" and "development" distributions. Since this is a new format, we don't have much directly relevant experience. However, experience with past releases suggests that we can hope to promote XEmacs 21.4 to "stable" status after about 6 weeks. * Getting XEmacs 21.4.0 XEmacs 21.4.0 is available in source form, including pre-compiled "core" Lisp libraries and pre-built Info files, from ftp.xemacs.org and mirrors (http://www.xemacs.org/Download/index.html#mirror_index). See http://www.xemacs.org/Download/ for general information about downloading XEmacs. (It will be updated to reflect the latest information about 21.4.0 shortly; our Webmaster is taking a well-earned vacation.) For those wedded to their old command-line FTP client, the following URLs may be useful: ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.4/xemacs-21.4.0.tar.gz or build the Lisp and Info from source, saving download time, with ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.4/xemacs-21.4.0-src.tar.gz In either case, you need the "packaged Lisp" for more than the most basic functionality. You may use packages previously installed for use with XEmacs 21.1 or later without change. For new installations, the "SUMO" distribution of (almost) all packaged Lisp is available as ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages/xemacs-sumo.tar.gz ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/packages/xemacs-mule-sumo.tar.gz The latter should be installed only if you are building XEmacs with the MULE multilingual support; it contains Lisp files that cannot be correctly loaded by a unibyte XEmacs. See README.packages. XEmacs 21.4.0 is also available via anonymous CVS. To get the latest in the 21.4 series, check out (or update) with the "release-21-4" tag. This should be sufficient for almost all users; from now on patches will be carefully screened to ensure that every release is more stable than the last. If for some reason you specifically want the "point oh" release, use the "r21-4-0" tag. See http://cvs.xemacs.org/ for general instructions on getting XEmacs via anonymous CVS. Binary kits are not available at this time, except for the MS Windows platform. The "netinstaller" is available as ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.exe ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/windows/setup.ini and will automatically fetch binaries and Lisp packages, and set up your system. Since the netinstaller uses prebuilt binaries, it lags the source release by a few days. We are considering providing binary kits for important platforms that lack independent distributors (a la the Linux "distributions" or the FreeBSD "ports" maintainers) for at least some releases once 21.4 is accepted as "stable". Volunteers should contact the Release Manager, "Stephen Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt;, and let me know what platforms you can build for. * Important notice for CVS users: The CVS Repository structure has been rationalized thanks to Michael Sperber. The development code is now on the trunk. There are several active branches, each with per-release tags of the form "r21-4-0" (major-minor-patchlevel), and a branch tag which always gives the tip: Branch Branch tag Release tag Development trunk (21.5): none r21-5-xx "Gamma" branch (21.4): release-21-4 r21-2-xx Stable branch (21.1): release-21-1 r21-1-xx The trunk has a special "moving" release tag, "r21-5-latest-beta". This is updated with each release to reflect the most recent beta release. (The Beta Release Maintainer makes some effort to ensure that beta releases at least build; there is no way to make such a guarantee for the tip of the trunk in our development model.) N.B. Until a 21.5 beta is released, the trunk will show a version of 21.2.46 "Urania", because that is the last beta in the series. (cvs diff'ing the trunk against Urania will show some differences, but version.sh hasn't changed yet.) "r21-5-latest-beta" was initialized to reflect this state of affairs. There is no "moving" release tag for stable versions; just use "-r release-21-1" if you need the current release of version 21.1, and "-r release-21-4" for 21.4. To update an existing CVS checkout to the trunk (development), use the -A flag to cvs update, or simply cvs checkout with no -r flag. To checkout or update to one of the other branches, use the -r flag with the appropriate branch tag. http://cvs.xemacs.org/ has more information. It is in the process of being updated, so some information about tags may be inaccurate for a few days. * Thanks ... to all the developers, reviewers, and testers; to the Electrotechnical Laboratory and BeOpen.com for financial support; to Tux.org and SourceForge[tm] for hosting services; and to our users. * Apologies The targeted release date of March 1 was too aggressive, resulting in 6 weeks' delay. We hope you find it worth the wait. No, I'm not using the latest and greatest XEmacs to write this. Next time.... April 16, 2001 XEmacs 21.4 Release Manager Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."