* Xemacs 21.4.1 "Copyleft" is released. "Copyleft" is the second in the OXYMORON series of releases. Relative to XEmacs 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor", it contains a few typo fixes in the documentation and some fixes to critical bugs (all of which manifest rarely, fortunately). More detailed information about the changes is presented below. Xemacs 21.4.0 itself contained a large number of improvements and extensions to the current stable version, XEmacs 21.1.14. For more information about the OXYMORON series, see etc/NEWS, the initial release announcement http://www.xemacs.org/Releases/21.4.0.html and the release planning 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 21.4.1 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, for several reasons, for users who absolutely must minimize risk, we continue to recommend the 21.1 series. Nevertheless, almost all 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. * Changes included in XEmacs 21.4.1 "Copyleft" - Temporary fix to crash in map-keymap applied. Thanks to Mike Alexander. No thanks to your Release Manager, who managed to omit applying it a couple of weeks ago. - Crash in Motif builds on closing frame fixed. Thanks to Glynn Clements. - Descriptions of workarounds for crashes and hangs related to ESD (don't configure it) and Athena3d (how to configure it properly) added to PROBLEMS. - about.el overhauled, a few new hackers' entries or photos added, and old ones updated. Thanks to Ben Wing. - More etc\NEWS. Thanks to Ben Wing. - Typo fix in etc\sample.init.el. Thanks to Ben Wing. - Typos fixed in a number of documents. * Getting XEmacs 21.4.1 XEmacs 21.4.1 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 21.4.1 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-21.4.1.tar.gz or build the Lisp and Info from source, saving download time, with ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.4/xemacs-21.4.1-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 21.4.1 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 this release, use the "r21-4-1" tag. See http://cvs.xemacs.org/ for general instructions on getting XEmacs via anonymous CVS. Binary kits are not planned at this time, except for the MS Windows platform. The "netinstaller" for MS Windows uses prebuilt binaries, so it lags the source release by a few days. There will be an announcement of availability shortly. (The adventurous can subscribe to the xemacs-nt mailing list to learn about prerelease tests.) Installshield and Wise versions are also being discussed. 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 r21-4-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.) 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 No, I'm _still_ not using the latest and greatest XEmacs to write this. Next time.... April 19, 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."