$Id: README,v 1.87 2015/01/02 04:53:04 phil Exp $

2.0 release of ``The Macro Implementation of SNOBOL4 in C'' (CSNOBOL4)

	For users of earlier releases:

	A change in the "major version" number to 2.0 was chosen to
	reflect not only a major change in functionality -- addition
	of the long (thought) lost "BLOCKS" extension, and many new
	extensions (see the CHANGES file for more details), but to
	also reflect that this release DEPENDS on loadable module
	support that has only been tested on a few popular platforms
	(OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows).

	The online "man pages" have been GREATLY improved.

This is a free port of the original SIL (SNOBOL4 Implementation
Language) "macro" version of SNOBOL4 (developed at Bell Labs) with the
`C' language as a target.

SNOBOL4, while known primarily as a string language excels at any task
involving symbolic manipulations.  It provides dynamic typing, garbage
collection, user data types, on the fly compilation.

The latest release can always be found at http://www.snobol4.org/csnobol4

****************************************************************

Copyright © 1993-2015, Philip L. Budne
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

****************************************************************

Documentation;

Many manual pages, start with "man snobol4"
    HTML versions of man pages installed in /usr/local/share/doc/snobol4/

Scans of SNOBOL4 books;
    http://www.snobol4.org/doc/books.html

For a good SNOBOL4 tutorial look at the Catspaw SNOBOL4 tutorial;
    http://www.snobol4.org/doc/burks/tutorial/contents.htm

Also useful are the Catspaw Vanilla SNOBOL4 manual;
    http://www.snobol4.org/doc/burks/manual/contents.htm

and the Catspaw SPITBOL manual:
    ftp://ftp.snobol4.com/spitman.pdf

INSTALL
	Information on building and installing CSNOBOL4

README
	This file

CHANGES
	Important changes since last release

TODO.soon
	current top priority tasks (hopefully small in any release)

TODO
	older/ancient identified tasks

There is a mailing list for SNOBOL4 on Yahoo Groups:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/snobol/info

http://www.snobol4.org/
	SNOBOL4 resources

Acknowledgments;

	First and foremost, I would like to thank Ralph Griswold, for
	all his invaluable help and time digging up old documentation!
	(as well as his work of 50 years ago, designing and
	implementing the language)!

	I would also never have succeeded without the help of Mark
	Emmer of Catspaw and his excellent SPARC SPITBOL product
	(used to bootstrap this implementation).

	The contributions of source code by Mark Emmer (SNOBOL4+) and
	Viktors Berstis (Minnesota SNOBOL4) have allowed me to advance
	the state of CSNOBOL4 in ways that would have been difficult or
	impossible.

The following have also provided help, encouragement, support, input,
historical background, testing, fixes, testing, money, etc
(in chronological order);

	Bill Henneman
	Andrew Koenig
	Doug McIlroy
	Robert Dewar
	Alan Martin
	Jerry Leichter
	Scott Marovich
	Jonathan Chandross
	Randolph J. Herber
	Jules Gilbert
	Phillip Lee Thomas
	Martin D. Waller
	Burkhard Meissner
	John McHugh
	Chrystopher Nehaniv
	Arne Larsson
	Rik Faith
	Keith Waclena
	Steve Kibler
	Peter-Arno Coppen
	David J. Birnbaum
	Yuli Barcohen
	Stephen Del Rea
	David Feustel
	Laurence Battin
	John Refling
	Greg White
	Russ Urquhart
	Jan Bernard
	Chris Anderson
	Rafal M. Sulejman
	Ed Quillen
	Robin H. Johnson
	Guido Milanese
	David Stodolsky
	Robin Kay
	Sudarshan Gaikaiwari
	Bruce Axtens
	Dani Richard
	Meir Livneh
	Mark Laster
	Michael Richter
	James McKelvey
	Chap Harrison
	Robert Shanley
	Howard Modell
	Ron Hochsprung
	Steven Brenton
	Fred Weigel
	Anonymous
	Mike Greenberg
	Mike Alexander	(SNOBOL4B sources)
	Clem Cole
	Harald Arnesen
	Kevlin Henney	(Windows opendir emulation)
	Ozan Yigit	(SDBM library)
	Jonathan Kaye

If you are interested in getting mailings about new releases, send me
a timing report.  I'm always interested in knowing what people are
using SNOBOL4 for!

Phil Budne <phil@snobol4.org>
