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  1. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  2. GNU's Bulletin January, 1990
  3. The GNU's Bulletin is the semi-annual newsletter of the Free Software
  4. Foundation, bringing you news about the GNU Project.
  5. Free Software Foundation, Inc. Telephone: (617) 876-3296
  6. 675 Massachusetts Avenue Electronic mail: gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu
  7. Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
  8. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  9. Contents
  10. ********
  11. GNU'S Who
  12. What Is the Free Software Foundation?
  13. What Is Copyleft?
  14. GNUs Flashes
  15. ``Boycott Apple; Defend Apple'' by Richard Stallman
  16. ``League for Programming Freedom'' by Michael Bloom and Richard Stallman
  17. ``Online Book Initiative'' by Barry Shein
  18. Common Knowledge's Universal Index
  19. Late Flash: a gNU Support Company
  20. GNU Wish List
  21. GNU Project Status Report
  22. Freemacs, an Extensible Editor for MS-DOS
  23. GNU Documentation
  24. GNU Software Available Now
  25. How to Get GNU Software
  26. Thank GNUs
  27. FSF Order Form
  28. GNU's Who
  29. *********
  30. Joseph Arceneaux is working on Emacs version 19. Jim Kingdon is working
  31. on GDB. Kathy Hargreaves is working on the regular-expression routines
  32. `regex.c', Karl Berry is working on Ghostscript, and both Kathy and Karl
  33. have been working on transforming character bitmaps into cubic splines,
  34. so that GNU can include high-quality typefaces. Roland McGrath and Joy
  35. Kendall spent last summer programming various GNU software. Mike Rowan
  36. has just been hired as a programmer.
  37. Mike Haertel is working on finishing the C interpreter started by
  38. Nobuyuki Hikichi, in addition to continuing to maintain and improve
  39. various utilities and library routines. David Lawrence is currently
  40. expanding the GNU Emacs Lisp libraries. He is working for us at the
  41. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
  42. Brian Fox is now working for us at Caltech. He has released the beta
  43. version of Bash, the `Bourne Again SHell', and is now working on GNU's
  44. daemon-based Finger. Jay Fenlason is writing the GNU spreadsheet
  45. program Oleo, and maintaining `tar', `sed' and the GNU assembler. Jay
  46. also takes care of our backups and creating distribution tapes.
  47. Diane Barlow Close has written initial drafts of the documentation for
  48. all of the small Unix utilities that have been completed for us and is
  49. now working on a shell programming manual. Diane is the primary author
  50. of the GAWK Manual. Mona Cosmos is working on an introductory user
  51. manual (shell commands, files, etc.) and Grace Sylvan is working on a C
  52. manual.
  53. S. Opus Goldstein is still running our office. She now has an
  54. assistant, Erica Brigid ni Judith, who answers the phone machine,
  55. handles correspondence, and packs the orders. Robert J. Chassell is our
  56. Treasurer. Besides dealing with foundation issues not related to
  57. programming, he is working on an elementary introduction to programming
  58. in Emacs Lisp.
  59. Richard Stallman continues as a volunteer to do countless tasks,
  60. including refining the C compiler, GNU Emacs, etc. and their
  61. documentation. Finally, volunteer Len Tower continues as our electronic
  62. JOAT (jack-of-all-trades), handling mailing lists and gnUSENET,
  63. information requests, etc.
  64. GNU's Bulletin
  65. --------------
  66. Copyright (C) 1990 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  67. Written by: Jim Kingdon, Robert J. Chassell, Michael Bloom, Barry Shein,
  68. Micheal Tiemann, Richard Stallman, and Leonard H. Tower Jr.
  69. Illustrations: Etienne Suvasa
  70. Japanese Translators: Mieko Hikichi, Nobuyuki Hikichi
  71. Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies of
  72. this document as received, in any medium, provided that the copyright
  73. notice and permission notice are preserved, and that the distributor
  74. grants the recipient permission for further redistribution as permitted
  75. by this notice.
  76. What Is the Free Software Foundation?
  77. *************************************
  78. The Free Software Foundation is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on
  79. copying, redistribution, understanding and modification of computer
  80. programs. We do this by promoting the development and use of free
  81. software in all areas of computer use. Specifically, we are putting
  82. together a complete integrated software system named "GNU" (GNU's Not
  83. Unix) that will be upwardly compatible with Unix. Some large parts of
  84. this system are already working and we are distributing them now.
  85. The word "free" in our name refers to two specific freedoms: first, the
  86. freedom to copy a program and give it away to your friends and
  87. co-workers; second, the freedom to change a program as you wish, by
  88. having full access to source code. Furthermore, you can study the
  89. source and learn how such programs are written. You may then be able to
  90. port it, improve it, and share your changes with others.
  91. Other organizations distribute whatever free software happens to be
  92. available. By contrast, FSF concentrates on development of new free
  93. software, building toward a GNU system complete enough to eliminate the
  94. need to purchase a proprietary system.
  95. Besides developing GNU, the Foundation has secondary functions:
  96. producing tapes and printed manuals of GNU software, carrying out
  97. distribution, and accepting gifts to support GNU development. We are
  98. tax exempt; you can deduct donations to us on your tax returns. Our
  99. development effort is funded partly from donations and partly from
  100. distribution fees. Note that the distribution fees purchase just the
  101. service of distribution: you never have to pay anyone license fees to
  102. use GNU software, and you always have the freedom to make your copy from
  103. a friend's computer at no charge (provided your friend is willing).
  104. The Foundation also maintains a Service Directory: a list of people who
  105. offer service for pay to users of GNU programs and systems. The Service
  106. Directory is located in file `etc/SERVICE' in the GNU Emacs
  107. distribution. Service can mean answering questions for new users,
  108. customizing programs, porting to new systems, or anything else. Contact
  109. us if you want to be listed or wish a copy.
  110. After we create our programs, we continually update and improve them.
  111. We release between 2 and 20 updates a year for each program. Doing this
  112. while developing new programs takes a lot of work, so any donations of
  113. pertinent source code and documentation, machines, labor or money are
  114. always appreciated.
  115. The board of the Foundation is: Richard Stallman, President; Robert J.
  116. Chassell, Treasurer; Gerald J. Sussman, Harold Abelson and Leonard H.
  117. Tower Jr., Directors.
  118. What Is Copyleft?
  119. *****************
  120. In the section entitled "What Is the Free Software Foundation?" we state
  121. that "you never have to pay anyone license fees to use GNU software, and
  122. you always have the freedom to make your copy from a friend's computer
  123. at no charge." What exactly do we mean by this, and how do we make sure
  124. that it stays true?
  125. The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public
  126. domain. Then people who get it from sharers can share it with others.
  127. But bad citizens can also do what they like to do: sell binary-only
  128. versions under typical don't-share-with-your-neighbor licenses. They
  129. would thus enjoy the benefits of the freeness of the original program
  130. while withholding these benefits from the users. It could easily come
  131. about that most users get the program this way, and our goal of making
  132. the program free for *all* users would have been undermined.
  133. To prevent this from happening, we don't normally place GNU programs in
  134. the public domain. Instead, we protect them by what we call
  135. "copylefts". A copyleft is a legal instrument that makes everybody free
  136. to copy a program as long as the person getting the copy gets with it
  137. the freedom to distribute further copies, and the freedom to modify
  138. their copy (which means that they must get access to the source code).
  139. Typical software companies use copyrights to take away these freedoms;
  140. now we software sharers use copylefts to preserve these freedoms.
  141. The copyleft used by the GNU project is made from a combination of a
  142. copyright notice and the "GNU General Public License". The copyright
  143. notice is the usual kind. The General Public License is a copying
  144. license which basically says that you have the freedoms we want you to
  145. have and that you can't take these freedoms away from anyone else. (The
  146. actual document consists of several pages of rather complicated legalbol
  147. that our lawyer said we needed.) The complete license is included in
  148. all GNU source code distributions and many manuals, and we will send you
  149. a copy on request.
  150. We encourage others to copyleft their programs using the General Public
  151. License; basically programs only need to include a few sentences stating
  152. that the license applies to them. Specifics on using the License
  153. accompany it, so refer there for details.
  154. *"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we
  155. should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of
  156. ours."*
  157. -Benjamin Franklin
  158. GNUs Flashes
  159. ************
  160. * Donation from Japan Unix Society
  161. The Japan Unix Society has given us $10,000. They have also been
  162. distributing Nobuyuki and Mieko Hikichi's translation of the GNU's
  163. bulletin and have plans to distribute GNU software. We want to say
  164. "Thank You," and encourage other user groups to support the
  165. development of high quality free software.
  166. * Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
  167. We will publish the long awaited, and very long, `GNU Emacs Lisp
  168. Reference Manual' in March 1990. The manual describes the GNU Emacs
  169. Lisp programming language in detail.
  170. * Long-named options
  171. We have started adding long-named options to many of our utilities.
  172. For example, instead of remembering whether to use `-v' or `-V',
  173. you can use `+verbose' (or any unambiguous abbreviation) in all
  174. programs. Eventually we hope to provide command-line completion
  175. for long option names.
  176. * `indent'
  177. We have added some enhancements to the `indent' prettyprinter from
  178. the 4.3BSD-tahoe free software release. GNU indent improvements
  179. include removal of arbitrary limits, GNU coding style support, and
  180. bug fixes.
  181. * GNU compiler gaining acceptance
  182. Many people are now using our C compiler, including the Open
  183. Software Foundation (as part of their operating system); Data
  184. General (for their Aviion 88000 based workstation); and Intel (for
  185. their 960 microprocessor).
  186. * GNU Chess defeats Fidelity Mach 3
  187. A 10 game match was conducted between GNU Chess 1.55 running on a
  188. Sun Sparcstation-1 and the strong commercial chess machine Fidelity
  189. Mach 3. Fidelity Mach 3 is officially rated USCF 2265 (2200 is
  190. master). Most observers acknowledge it is a true master. The
  191. match result was 7-3 in GNU's favor. After various corrections, we
  192. arrive at a putative rating of around 2330 (strong master) for GNU
  193. Chess 1.55 on this machine.
  194. This result was most unexpected since prior versions of GNU Chess
  195. had scored no more than 3 points out of 10 against the Mach 3. The
  196. big leap appears to come from: (1) the inclusion of Hans Eric
  197. Sandstrom's fast move generator and (2) the Sparcstation-1, which
  198. is (apparently) particularly suited to speedy chess processing.
  199. Minor modifications to the book, draw factor, and thinking on
  200. opponent's time have also helped.
  201. Please remember this rating is based on a short match result.
  202. Certain moves GNU Chess plays are clearly non-master in quality.
  203. Computer masters generally achieve their strength through accuracy
  204. of tactics, not subtle positional moves.
  205. Boycott Apple; Defend Apple
  206. ***************************
  207. by Richard Stallman
  208. Most of the people I know in the computer field are disgusted with Apple
  209. for its look-and-feel lawsuit. So, when they hear that Xerox has sued
  210. Apple in the same way, they are usually delighted: now Sculley may get
  211. what he deserves.
  212. There is only one dark cloud in this inviting landscape: if Xerox wins,
  213. the rest of us will also get what Sculley deserves.
  214. In practical terms, a Xerox victory would have the same kind of effect
  215. as a victory by Apple in its lawsuit against HP and Microsoft. If we
  216. lose the freedom to develop and distribute window systems, it little
  217. matters precisely who has taken it away. The dangerous precedent for
  218. future cases on other kinds of software would likewise be the same.
  219. However, Xerox as a monopolist could be worse in degree. Xerox was
  220. involved in an earlier stage of window system development, so a Xerox
  221. monopoly might cover a wider range of window systems than an Apple
  222. monopoly.
  223. For the GNU project, the practical result might be that we cannot have a
  224. window system. We have been planning to use the X window system, but if
  225. Xerox wins the suit, this could become illegal.
  226. An additional danger in the Xerox suit is that public sympathy for
  227. Xerox, due to resentment of Apple's own lawsuit and to Xerox's early
  228. role in developing window system ideas, may help Xerox win.
  229. This sympathy is misplaced. Xerox entered a competitive market
  230. functioning under well-known rules: no one could copyright a user
  231. interface. (As for ideas and techniques, copyright has never applied to
  232. those.) They developed an interesting product that failed in the market
  233. due to various mistakes---an event which is not unusual in business.
  234. Now they wish to escape the consequences of their errors by changing the
  235. rules retroactively. This is hardly fair.
  236. In order for us to keep our freedom to write software, we must now
  237. defeat Xerox as well as Apple. This means our task is now harder.
  238. However, the Xerox lawsuit may aid us indirectly: the absurdity of this
  239. mess of lawsuits may help convince the public that the whole idea of
  240. look-and-feel copyright must be firmly rejected.
  241. But being convinced is not enough; to end the danger of look-and-feel
  242. suits, we must convince the courts and Congress. By expressing our
  243. views in public, writing to the House Subcommittee on Intellectual
  244. Property, or joining the League for Programming Freedom, we can put an
  245. end to this wasteful legal contentiousness.
  246. You can write to the subcomittee at:
  247. House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property,
  248. U.S. House of Representatives,
  249. Washington, DC 20515
  250. League for Programming Freedom
  251. ******************************
  252. by Michael Bloom and Richard Stallman
  253. The League for Programming Freedom is an organization of people who
  254. oppose the attempt to monopolize common user interfaces through "look
  255. and feel" copyright lawsuits. Some of us are programmers, who worry
  256. that such monopolies will obstruct our work. Some of us are users,
  257. who want new computer systems to be compatible with the interfaces we
  258. know.
  259. "Look and feel" lawsuits aim to create a new class of
  260. government-enforced monopolies broader in scope than ever before.
  261. Such a system of user-interface copyright would impose gratuitous
  262. incompatibility, reduce competition, and stifle innovation.
  263. We in the League hope to prevent these problems by preventing
  264. user-interface copyright. The League is not opposed to copyright law as
  265. it was understood until 1986---copyright on particular programs. Our
  266. aim is to stop changes in the copyright system which would take away
  267. programmers' traditional freedom to write new programs compatible with
  268. existing programs and practices.
  269. The League for Programming Freedom will act against the doctrine behind
  270. look-and-feel suits by any means consistent with the law and
  271. intellectual liberty. We will write editorials, talk with public
  272. officials, file amicus curiae briefs with the courts, and boycott
  273. egregious offenders. On May 24th, 1989, we picketed Lotus headquarters
  274. on account of their lawsuits against competitors, stimulating widespread
  275. media coverage for the issue. If you have other ideas, please suggest
  276. them.
  277. In the future, the League may also fight other restrictive practices,
  278. such as software patents, which threaten to make every design decision
  279. in software development a chance for a lawsuit. The League's founders
  280. consider software patents potentially even more dangerous than
  281. look-and-feel copyright, but it will be up to the members to decide
  282. whether the League should campaign against them.
  283. The League needs both activist members and members who only pay their
  284. dues.
  285. To join, write to:
  286. League for Programming Freedom,
  287. 1 Kendall Square #143,
  288. P.O.Box 9171,
  289. Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
  290. Phone: (617) 492-0023
  291. Note that the League for Programming Freedom is a separate organization
  292. >from the Free Software Foundation; please direct all League inquiries to
  293. the above address, not to the Foundation.
  294. Online Book Initiative
  295. **********************
  296. by Barry Shein
  297. The Online Book Initiative has been formed to make available freely
  298. redistributable collections of information. There exist huge
  299. collections of books, conference proceedings, reference material,
  300. catalogues, etc., which can be freely shared. Some of it is in
  301. machine-readable form, much of it isn't.
  302. The purpose of the Online Book Initiative is to create a publicly
  303. accessible repository for this information, a net-worker's library.
  304. Information in the Online Book Repository will be available for free
  305. redistribution. On-line access, magnetic media and other methods of
  306. distribution will involve reasonable charges for the services provided,
  307. not the information.
  308. There are other organizations with similar overall goals (e.g. Project
  309. Gutenberg, Common Knowledge); in some cases the details of their goals
  310. or approaches are quite different. We are in contact with most of them
  311. and in general our conversations are very positive. Anyone putting
  312. textual information on-line soon develops an attitude of "the more, the
  313. merrier;" it's a massive area of endeavor.
  314. {What We Wish to Archive}
  315. All on-line materials (other than software collections) such as books,
  316. journals, catalogues, conference proceedings, magazines, manuals, maps,
  317. images, technical documentation, reference works, etc. The only
  318. software we are interested in is software specific to the viewing,
  319. manipulation, searching and maintenance of information in the
  320. repository.
  321. Materials must be free of copyrights limiting redistribution by us or
  322. any individual or organization who receives them. The Online Book
  323. Initiative is dealing only with materials free of restrictive copyrights
  324. because we don't want to be distracted by the complications they demand.
  325. We also need pointers to collections of materials that may be available.
  326. For example, there are government collections of interesting data which
  327. are available at reasonable costs and do not limit further
  328. redistribution of copies obtained.
  329. {What We Need from You}
  330. Beyond machine-readable material there are huge collections of printed
  331. material which could be redistributed if put on-line. We need people
  332. willing to organize informal projects to scan, type or otherwise get
  333. this material on-line for inclusion in the Online Book Repository.
  334. We need to get in touch with Library and Information Scientists
  335. interested in helping us create formats and structures for organizing
  336. the repository.
  337. We need international participation to help ensure that our efforts are
  338. useful to people everywhere.
  339. We need people willing to participate in a Technical Advisory Board to
  340. help us guide our efforts.
  341. We need involvement from academia, industry and governments to help us
  342. enrich this effort without bounds and make available a first-rate,
  343. freely available information utility.
  344. We need involvement from publishers who have materials that can be
  345. included in the Online Book Repository. Many books and reference works
  346. have become unprofitable to publish by ordinary paper means. It's time
  347. to make these materials available!
  348. We need involvement from the technical community to choose and implement
  349. multi-media software standards such as hypertext, mark-up languages,
  350. index and catalogue software, text retrieval, network access methods and
  351. more. Standards are critical to our efforts.
  352. {What We Are Offering}
  353. `world.std.com' is a public access UNIX system which will serve as the
  354. initial repository. It is a Sun4/280 system and will be expanded as
  355. needed.
  356. Anyone can dial into the system and set up an account if they wish
  357. direct access (617-739-WRLD). Accounts are charged and proceeds will be
  358. used to build the Online Book Repository.
  359. UUCP and other links will be available for the redistribution of
  360. collections. We will also make collections available on magnetic media
  361. for reasonable copying charges.
  362. {How to Get Involved}
  363. If you think you can help or want more information send electronic mail
  364. to `obi@world.std.com'. There are two mailing lists, one for general
  365. discussion about Online Book Initiative issues and another which
  366. receives announcements only (the general discussion list will see all
  367. announcements so you only need to be on one). To subscribe to either,
  368. mail a request to `obi-request@world.std.com'.
  369. Or call us at Software Tool & Die, 617-739-0202.
  370. Or drop by our office and chat if you're in the area: 1330 Beacon
  371. Street, Brookline, MA 02146.
  372. {Postscript}
  373. This started as an informal discussion group that called themselves "The
  374. KiloMonkeys Project" ("Strong Typing For Weak Minds") who wanted to
  375. figure out how to get useful materials on-line and generally available.
  376. I have decided to make Software Tool & Die a home for this activity and
  377. formalize the project under the new name "The Online Book Initiative."
  378. My thanks to that original group from Monkey Shein.
  379. Common Knowledge's Universal Index
  380. **********************************
  381. There is an international group called Common Knowledge working to
  382. compile public domain, copyright free and machine-readable information.
  383. The group, consisting of journalists, scientists, librarians and others,
  384. is amassing a database of non-copyrighted information which they call
  385. the "Universal Index". They are doing this to provide an alternative to
  386. the information merchants, who are increasingly successful at reducing
  387. the amount of material available to traditional libraries. Their
  388. address is:
  389. Common Knowledge,
  390. Jefferson, MD 21755, USA
  391. Phone: (301) 695-3100
  392. Late Flash: a gNU Support Company
  393. *********************************
  394. Cygnus Support has been organized as the first for-profit corporation
  395. that provides commercial support *only* for free software, that we are
  396. aware of. Their initial support package is for GNU program development
  397. tools at sites with 50 to 150 seats. Contact
  398. `cygint!tiemann@labrea.stanford.edu' or Cygnus Support, 814 University
  399. Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94301. (FSF is not affiliated with Cygnus Support;
  400. note that numerous individual consultants are listed in the GNU Service
  401. Directory in file `etc/SERVICE' in the GNU Emacs distribution.)
  402. GNU Wish List
  403. *************
  404. Wishes for this issue are for:
  405. * Someone skilled in compiler maintenance who could take over GCC
  406. maintenance for RMS. This would probably be a full-time job.
  407. * We are hiring both programmers and technical writers to work on
  408. Project GNU. We want people who can do a good job and who are
  409. willing to work for less money than most employers pay. You must
  410. either be in Cambridge, Mass., or be able to maintain good
  411. electronic communication with us. Contact `rms@ai.mit.edu' or send
  412. mail to Richard Stallman c/o the Free Software Foundation if you
  413. are interested.
  414. * Volunteers to help write utilities and documentation. Send mail to
  415. `gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu' for the task list.
  416. * Professors who might be interested in sponsoring or hosting
  417. research assistants to do GNU development, with full or partial FSF
  418. support. Several schools have done this and we welcome others to
  419. join in.
  420. * Speech generation, speech recognition, and character recognition
  421. software (if the devices aren't too weird), with the device drivers
  422. if possible. This would help at least one partially disabled
  423. programmer we know to be productive.
  424. * Grammar checking software for English and other natural languages.
  425. * Copies of newspaper and journal articles mentioning the GNU
  426. Project. Send these to the address on the front cover, or send a
  427. citation to `gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu'.
  428. * Money, as always. Please remember, donations are tax-deductible.
  429. With the latest donations, we have again been able to expand our
  430. staff.
  431. One way to give us a small amount of money is to order a
  432. distribution tape or two. This may not count as a donation for tax
  433. purposes, but it can qualify as a business expense.
  434. GNU Project Status Report
  435. *************************
  436. * GNU Emacs
  437. Except for bug fixes, work on Emacs version 18 has ceased. Emacs
  438. 19 is advancing and the new features we have added include multiple
  439. X window capability, support for European character sets and
  440. multiple fonts, enhanced visual aspects including scrollbars,
  441. floating point numbers, a relocating memory allocator for buffers,
  442. more sophisticated mouse support and use of function keys, and many
  443. changes to the Lisp libraries.
  444. Other features we are considering are associating property lists
  445. and actions with regions of text, incremental syntax analysis for
  446. programming languages, source-level debugging for Emacs Lisp, hooks
  447. to be run if point moves outside a certain range, a more hyper-text
  448. oriented Info mode, a mouse-help X window application, menu bars,
  449. and possibly a new and improved pop-up menu system.
  450. We don't know how much of this we will do before we make a release,
  451. or when that release will be, so please don't ask. We will
  452. announce it.
  453. We will publish the `GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual' in March
  454. 1990.
  455. * Kernel
  456. We hope to use the Mach message-passing kernel being developed at
  457. CMU. The current distributed version of Mach is not free because
  458. it contains code from BSD of AT&T origin. However, the Mach
  459. developers have been working to separate this code from the kernel
  460. and they now say they have a first version of this running in alpha
  461. test. Prof. Rashid assures us that when this version is stable, it
  462. will be free.
  463. Should Mach not become available, then we will start the kernel
  464. with either MIT's TRIX kernel or Berkeley's Sprite system.
  465. Right now, we aren't doing any kernel work. It does not make sense
  466. for us to start a kernel project now, when we still hope to use
  467. Mach.
  468. * GNU Debugger
  469. The GNU source-level C debugger, GDB, is now being distributed
  470. along with Emacs version 18 as GDB version 2.8. GDB version 3.4 is
  471. distributed on the beta-test (compiler) tape, and as soon as it is
  472. stable it will replace version 2.8 on the Emacs tape.
  473. When we have a stable release of GDB 3.x we will start work on GDB
  474. 4. We plan to add over-the-ethernet debugging, remote
  475. cross-debugging, and Dalek extensions such as `if', `while', and
  476. event-based debugging (see Crawford, Richard H., Ho, W. Wilson, and
  477. Olsson, Ronald A., `A Dataflow Approach to Event-Based Debugging',
  478. University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, CSE-89-7, May, 1989),
  479. and other features.
  480. Other features that we may add sometime are watchpoints, and the
  481. ability to debug multi-threaded parallel programs.
  482. * C Compiler
  483. The GNU C Compiler, GCC, is now fairly reliable. People are still
  484. reporting bugs, but they also say they think there are fewer bugs
  485. than in commercial compilers. NeXT builds their entire system,
  486. including their port of the MACH kernel and NFS, with GCC. Someone
  487. has also told us that GCC successfully compiled a System V.3
  488. kernel. Much of the BSD source tree has been compiled with GCC.
  489. We are now working to stabilize GCC version 1 while incorporating
  490. new improvements into version 2. Version 2 now has support for
  491. nested functions, a certain amount of common subexpression
  492. elimination between basic blocks, and a new feature for classifying
  493. instructions that can be used to choose between long and short
  494. branches, or to provide raw data for instruction scheduling.
  495. Version 2 will support C`++' on the same basis as C itself. Also,
  496. we expect to have instruction scheduling and perhaps global common
  497. subexpression elimination. Ron Guilmette's Protoize, which
  498. generates ANSI C prototypes, will be merged in.
  499. We are currently implementing delayed-branch fill and pipeline
  500. scheduling (experimentally). We may add facilities for
  501. precompilation of header files to save time when they are large and
  502. the source files are small.
  503. We might also do other language front ends, but there seem to be
  504. enough volunteer GNUers willing to do this job. Jukka Virtanen is
  505. now working on the Pascal front-end. It is running, but before it
  506. will be ready for alpha testing it needs some new features and the
  507. ability to detect errors more gracefully. Other volunteers are
  508. working on FORTRAN and Modula. So far, no one has volunteered to
  509. write Ada or Cobol.
  510. GCC has recently been ported to the Motorola 88000, Intel 860, and
  511. Pyramid processors. Volunteers may be working on ports to the IBM
  512. 370, IBM PC/RT, 3B2, HP Spectrum, some sort of Gould machine, and
  513. the AMD 29000.
  514. * C Library
  515. Roland McGrath and some others continue to work on the C Library.
  516. The C library currently contains all of the ANSI C and POSIX.1
  517. functions, and work is in progress on POSIX.2 and Unix features.
  518. Doug Schmidt has provided an improved `qsort' which is faster than
  519. Berkeley's and is also reentrant.
  520. The C library is using a new `malloc' written by Mike Haertel.
  521. * Preliminary Ghostscript
  522. We are distributing Ghostscript, the free GNU software that
  523. provides nearly all the facilities of a Postscript interpreter, on
  524. our beta tape.
  525. Karl Berry and Kathy Hargreaves are working on adding typefaces.
  526. Beside typefaces, Ghostscript needs these enhancements: to serve as
  527. a previewer for multi-page files; to serve other X clients by
  528. drawing on their windows; to improve both its performance and
  529. visual quality. Other suggestions for enhancements are welcome.
  530. * Finger and Send
  531. We soon will have a daemon-based Finger program. It polls a
  532. selection of hosts and is thus able to tell you where each person
  533. is logged in.
  534. We are also testing a Send program for sending immediate messages
  535. to other users across the net.
  536. * Oleo
  537. Jay Fenlason is writing a spreadsheet named Oleo (better for you
  538. than the more expensive spreadsheet).
  539. * GNU Mailer
  540. We may use `smail', written by Landon Noll and Ronald Karr of
  541. Amdahl, or `zmailer', which Rayan Zachariasen is writing, or
  542. perhaps both.
  543. * File Manipulation Utilities
  544. We have a collection of utilities for file manipulation, including
  545. `ls', `mv', `cp', `cat', `rm', `du', `head', `tail' and `cmp'. We
  546. use these on our own machines and plan to release them soon.
  547. * Possible Target Machines
  548. GNU will require a CPU that uses 32-bit addresses and integers and
  549. addresses to the 8-bit byte. Virtual memory will probably be
  550. required.
  551. GNU Emacs and GNU C require more than a meg of addressable memory
  552. in the system, although a meg of physical memory may be enough if
  553. there is virtual memory. 2 meg would make a noticeable improvement
  554. in performance. Many source files need more than 1 meg of virtual
  555. memory to compile.
  556. A hard disk will be essential; at least 30 or 40 meg will be needed
  557. to hold a minimal system. Plus more space for the user's files, of
  558. course. We recommend at least 80meg for a personal GNU system, and
  559. that would be fairly cramped.
  560. Not that it will be impossible to adapt some or all of GNU for
  561. other architectures; but we don't currently consider it part of our
  562. job.
  563. * Distribution of 80386 Floppies Still Planned
  564. We are still considering distribution of 1.2 megabyte 5.25 inch
  565. diskettes.
  566. Freemacs, an Extensible Editor for MS-DOS
  567. *****************************************
  568. Russ Nelson has a copylefted editor for MS-DOS called Freemacs. It is
  569. one of the few editors that has a full extension language yet runs on
  570. small machines. It is the only such editor that tries to be compatible
  571. with GNU Emacs. For more information contact Russ via electronic mail
  572. (`nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu') or paper mail (Russell Nelson, 11 Grant
  573. St., Potsdam, NY, 13676).
  574. Note that the Free Software Foundation does not distribute Freemacs;
  575. please don't ask us about it.
  576. GNU Documentation
  577. *****************
  578. GNU is dedicated to having quality easy-to-use on-line and printed
  579. documentation. GNU manuals explain the underlying concepts, describe
  580. how to use all the features of each program, and give examples of
  581. command use.
  582. GNU documentation is distributed as Texinfo source files. Texinfo
  583. source yields both a typeset hardcopy and on-line presentations,
  584. accessed by a menu-driven system.
  585. The following manuals, provided with our software, are also available in
  586. hardcopy; see the order form on the inside back cover.
  587. The Emacs Manual describes how to use GNU Emacs. It also explains
  588. advanced features, such as outline mode and regular expression search.
  589. The manual tells how to use the special modes for programming in
  590. languages such as C and Lisp, how to use the tags utility, and how to
  591. compile and correct code. It also describes how to make your own
  592. keybindings and make other elementary customizations.
  593. The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, which will be released in March 1990,
  594. describes the GNU Emacs Lisp programming language. An introductory
  595. Emacs Lisp programming manual is also being written.
  596. The Texinfo Manual describes how to write documents in Texinfo source
  597. code. It describes the markup language used to create both an Info file
  598. and a printed document from the same source file: how to make tables,
  599. lists, chapters, nodes, indices and cross references. It also describes
  600. how to use Texinfo mode in GNU Emacs and how to catch mistakes.
  601. The Termcap Manual is often described as "Twice as much as you ever
  602. wanted to know about Termcap." It describes the format of the Termcap
  603. database, the definitions of terminal capabilities, and how to
  604. interrogate a terminal description. This manual is primarily for
  605. programmers.
  606. The Bison Manual describes how to write a grammar description that Bison
  607. can convert into a C program that can parse that grammar. This manual
  608. assumes no prior knowledge of parser generators. It describes the
  609. concepts and then provides a series of increasingly complex examples
  610. before describing what goes on in considerable detail.
  611. The GAWK Manual describes how to use the GNU implementation of AWK. It
  612. is written for someone who has never used AWK before, and describes all
  613. the features of this powerful string manipulating language.
  614. The Make Manual describes the GNU Make utility, a program used to
  615. rebuild parts of other programs when and as needed. The manual tells
  616. how to write a makefile, which specifies how to recompile the parts of
  617. your program and how they depend on each other.
  618. The GDB Manual explains how to use GDB, the GNU Debugger. It describes
  619. how to run your program under control of the debugger, how to examine
  620. and alter data within the program, and how to modify the flow of control
  621. within the program. It also explains how to use GDB through GNU Emacs,
  622. with auto-display of source lines.
  623. GNU Software Available Now
  624. **************************
  625. We now offer four Unix software source distribution tapes, plus VMS
  626. tapes for GNU Emacs and GNU C that include sources and VMS executables.
  627. The first Unix tape (called the "Release" or "Emacs" tape) contains GNU
  628. Emacs as well as various other well-tested programs that we consider
  629. reliable. The second Unix tape (called the "Beta test" or "Compiler"
  630. tape) contains the GNU C compiler and related utilities, and other new
  631. programs that are less thoroughly tested. The third and fourth Unix
  632. tapes (called the "X11" tapes) contain the X11 distribution from the MIT
  633. X consortium. See the order form, on the inside back cover, for details
  634. about media, etc.
  635. Note that the contents of the 1600bpi 9-track tapes and the QIC-24
  636. DC300XLP 1/4 inch cartridge tapes are the same. It is only the media
  637. that are different.
  638. Contents of the Release Tape
  639. ----------------------------
  640. The software on this tape is considered to be fairly stable, but as
  641. always, we welcome your bug reports.
  642. * GNU Emacs
  643. In 1975, Richard Stallman developed the first Emacs: the
  644. extensible, customizable real-time display editor. GNU Emacs is
  645. his second implementation of Emacs. It's the first Emacs available
  646. on Unix systems that offers true Lisp, smoothly integrated into the
  647. editor, for writing extensions. It also provides a special
  648. interface to MIT's free X window system, versions 10 and 11, which
  649. makes redisplay very fast. The current version is 18.55.
  650. GNU Emacs has been in widespread use since 1985 and often displaces
  651. proprietary implementations of Emacs because of its greater
  652. reliability as well as its good features and easier extensibility.
  653. DEC, Berkeley, and NeXT are all distributing Emacs with their
  654. systems. When Isaac Salzman set out to review various versions of
  655. Emacs, only one company wanted their product to be compared with
  656. GNU Emacs. In his review, which appeared in the July, 1989 issue
  657. of Unix Review, Salzman concluded, "When it comes to Emacs, GNU is
  658. the way to go."
  659. GNU Emacs (as of version 18.55) runs on many kinds of Unix systems:
  660. those made by Alliant, Altos 3068, Amdahl (UTS), Apollo, AT&T (3B
  661. machines and 7300 pc), CCI 5/32 and 6/32, Celerity, Convex, Digital
  662. (DECstation 3100; Vax running BSD or SysV), Dual, Elxsi 6400,
  663. Encore (DPC, APC, and XPC), Gould, HP (9000 series 200, 300 or 800
  664. (Spectrum) but not series 500), HLH Orion 1/05, IBM (RT/PC running
  665. 4.2 and AIX; PS2 running AIX), Integrated Solutions (Optimum V with
  666. 68020 and VMEbus), Intel 80386 (BSD, SysV, and Xenix; not MS-DOS),
  667. Iris (2500, 2500 Turbo, and 4D), LMI (Nu), Masscomp, Megatest,
  668. MIPS, NCR (Tower 32), Nixdorf Targon 31, Plexus, Prime, Pyramid,
  669. Sequent (Balance and Symmetry), SONY News, Stride (system release
  670. 2), Sun (1, 2, 3, 4, SparcStation, and 386i), Tahoe, Tektronix
  671. (NS32000 system & 4300), Texas Instruments (Nu), and Whitechapel
  672. (MG1).
  673. GNU Emacs is described by the `GNU Emacs Manual', which comes with
  674. the software in Texinfo form. See "GNU Documentation" above.
  675. * GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
  676. We will publish the `GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual' and put the
  677. Texinfo source on the release tape in March 1990. The manual
  678. describes the GNU Emacs Lisp programming language in detail and is for
  679. those interested in programming in GNU Emacs Lisp.
  680. * Debugger
  681. GDB 2.8 (GNU's Debugger) is the source-level C debugger written in
  682. 1986. It offers many features not usually found in debuggers on
  683. Unix, such as Emacs-style command history and substitution, a
  684. history that records all values examined within the debugger for
  685. concise later reference, multi-line user-defined commands, and good
  686. self-documentation.
  687. GDB 2.8 currently runs on Vaxes under 4.2 and 4.3bsd, on Sun 3
  688. under systems version 2, 3 and 4, on the SPARC (Sun 4) under
  689. systems version 3.2 and 4.0, HP9K320, ISI, Merlin, SONY News, Gould
  690. NPL and PN, i386, and on some 32000 systems. GDB 3.`*' supports
  691. more systems and has some additional features; see "Contents of the
  692. Beta Test Tape" below.
  693. On-line help and a Texinfo manual for GDB comes with the software
  694. (see "GNU Documentation" above).
  695. * Bison
  696. Bison is an upwardly compatible replacement parser generator for
  697. Yacc, with additional features. It has been in use for several
  698. years. Bison is used for compiling GNU C, so it is included on the
  699. GNU beta tape as well. The `Bison Manual' comes with the software
  700. in Texinfo form (see "GNU Documentation" above).
  701. * X Window System, V10R4
  702. Version 10 of X Windows is distributed on the GNU Emacs tape;
  703. version 11 (which is totally incompatible) is distributed on the
  704. two X11 tapes. GNU Emacs version 18.55 supports both versions 10
  705. and 11.
  706. * MIT Scheme
  707. Scheme is a simplified, lexically scoped dialect of Lisp, designed
  708. at MIT and other universities to teach students programming and to
  709. research new parallel programming constructs and compilation
  710. techniques. MIT Scheme is written in C and runs on many Unix
  711. systems. It now conforms to the "Revised^3 Report On The
  712. Algorithmic Language Scheme" (MIT AI Lab Memo 848a), for which TeX
  713. source is included in the distribution. Another good source of
  714. documentation for Scheme is "Structure and Interpretation of
  715. Computer Programs", by Harold Abelson and Gerald J. Sussman with
  716. Julie Sussman, the MIT Press & McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1985.
  717. * Yale T
  718. A variant of Scheme developed at Yale University, T is intended for
  719. production use in program development. T contains a native-code
  720. optimizing compiler that produces code that runs at speeds
  721. comparable to the running speeds of programs written in
  722. conventional languages. It runs on BSD Vaxes and a few types of
  723. 68020 systems. T is written in itself and cannot be bootstrapped
  724. without a binary (included), but it is great if you can use it.
  725. Some documentation is included.
  726. * `texi2roff'
  727. `texi2roff' translates GNU Texinfo files into a format that can be
  728. printed by the Unix [nt]roff programs utilizing the mm, ms or me
  729. macro packages. It is included on both tapes so that people who
  730. don't have a copy of TeX can print out GNU documentation.
  731. * GNU Chess and NetHack
  732. GNU chess is a chess program, now in its second major version. The
  733. first was written by Stuart Cracraft. The second was written and
  734. donated by John Stanback. If a successor is found that is
  735. significantly stronger, it could become the new GNU Chess. GNU
  736. chess has text-only and X display interfaces.
  737. Hack is a display oriented adventure game similar to Rogue.
  738. Contents of the Beta Test Tape
  739. ------------------------------
  740. The programs on this tape are all recent releases and can be considered
  741. to be at various stages of user testing. As always, we solicit your
  742. comments and bug reports. This tape is also known as the Compiler tape.
  743. * GNU CC
  744. The GNU C compiler is a fairly portable optimizing compiler. It
  745. generates good code for the 32000, 680x0 (optionally with 68881/2),
  746. 80386, 860, 88000, Alliant, Convex, Tahoe, and Vax CPUs, and for
  747. these RISC CPUs: Pyramid, SPARC, and SPUR. The MIPS RISC CPU is
  748. also supported. Machines using these CPUs include 386 running AIX,
  749. Alliant FX/8, Altos 3068, Apollo 68000/68020 running Aegis, AT&T
  750. 3B1, Convex C1 and C2, DECstation 3100, DEC VAX, Encore MultiMax
  751. (NS32000), Genix NS32000, Harris HCX-7 and HCX-9, HP-UX
  752. 68000/68020, HP running BSD, IBM PS/2 running AIX, Intel 386, Iris
  753. MIPS machine, ISI 68000/68020, MIPS, NeXT, Pyramid, Sequent Balance
  754. (NS32000), Sequent Symmetry (i386), SONY News, Sun 2, Sun 3
  755. (optionally with FPA), Sun 4, SparcStation, and Sun386i. The
  756. current version is 1.37. It supports full ANSI C as of the latest
  757. proposed standard.
  758. Optimizations include automatic register allocation, common
  759. subexpression elimination, invariant code motion from loops,
  760. induction variable optimizations, constant propagation and copy
  761. propagation, delaying popping of function call arguments, tail
  762. recursion elimination, plus many local optimizations that are
  763. automatically deduced from the machine description.
  764. Included with the compiler are Bison (also on the Emacs release
  765. tape), and the perfect hash-table generating utility (Gperf), plus
  766. the Texinfo source of the `GCC Manual'. This manual describes how
  767. to run and install the GNU C compiler, and how to port it to new
  768. processors. It describes new features and incompatibilities of the
  769. compiler, but people not familiar with C will also need a good book
  770. on C.
  771. * Assembler and Object File Utilities
  772. The GNU assembler (GAS) is a fairly portable, one pass assembler
  773. that is almost twice as fast as Unix `as'. It now works for 32x32,
  774. 680x0, 80386, Sparc (Sun 4), and Vax.
  775. We have free versions of `ar', `ld', `nm', `size', `gprof',
  776. `strip', and `ranlib'.
  777. The GNU linker `ld' runs significantly faster than the BSD version.
  778. Our `ld' is the only one that will give you source-line numbered
  779. error messages for multiply-defined symbols and undefined
  780. references.
  781. * COFF Support
  782. It is possible to run the entire suite of GNU software tools on
  783. System V, replacing COFF entirely. First you install the GNU
  784. compiler, assembler, linker and other utilities. Then you use the
  785. program `robotussin'---COFF medicine for your computer---to convert
  786. the system libraries from COFF format to GNU (i.e. BSD) format.
  787. When you compile programs, you will get ordinary GNU/BSD object
  788. files. Linking these with the GNU linker will produce GNU/BSD
  789. executables with a COFF header that the kernel will accept. The
  790. other GNU utilities such as `size', `nm' and `strip' know how to
  791. operate on these encapsulated files.
  792. As true COFF support is peripheral to the GNU project, please don't
  793. ask us to expend effort on it.
  794. * `make'
  795. GNU make includes almost all the features from the BSD, System V,
  796. and POSIX makes, as well many of our own extensions, such as
  797. parallelism, conditional execution, and text manipulation. Texinfo
  798. source for a manual is provided; see "GNU documentation" above.
  799. * Debugger
  800. Version 3.`*' of GDB, the GNU debugger, runs under BSD 4.2 and 4.3
  801. on Vaxes and Suns (2, 3, and 4), Convex, HP 9000/300's under BSD,
  802. HP 9000/320's under HPUX, System V 386 machines (with either GNU or
  803. native object file format), ISI Optimum V, Merlin under Utek 2.1,
  804. SONY News, Gould NPL and PN machines, Sequent Symmetry (a 386 based
  805. machine), Altos, and Encores under Umax 4.2.
  806. GDB features incremental reading of symbol tables (for fast startup
  807. and less memory use), command-line editing, the ability to call
  808. functions in the program being debugged, a value history, and
  809. user-defined commands. It can be used to debug C, C`++', and
  810. FORTRAN programs.
  811. GDB also provides for remote debugging over a serial line. Remote
  812. debugging is the most convenient way to develop software for
  813. systems which are too small to run a debugger; it allows you to
  814. have the features of GDB at your disposal even on such systems.
  815. * GAWK, FLEX and `tar'
  816. GAWK is GNU's version of the Unix AWK utility; it comes with a
  817. Texinfo manual (see "GNU Documentation" above). FLEX is a
  818. mostly-compatible replacement for the Unix `lex' scanner generator
  819. written by Vern Paxson of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. FLEX
  820. generates far more efficient scanners than `lex' does. GNU `tar'
  821. includes multivolume support, the ability to archive sparse files,
  822. automatic compression and decompression of archives, remote
  823. archives, and special features to allow `tar' to be used for
  824. incremental and full backups of file systems.
  825. * Freed Files from the U.C. Berkeley 4.3-tahoe Release
  826. These files have been declared by Berkeley to be free of AT&T code,
  827. and may be freely redistributed. They include complete sources for
  828. some utility programs, games, library routines and partial sources
  829. for many others.
  830. * RCS
  831. The latest version of the Revision Control System for version
  832. control and management of large software projects.
  833. * CVS
  834. CVS, the Concurrent Version System written by Brian Berliner,
  835. manages software revision and release control in a multi-developer,
  836. multi-directory, multi-group environment. It is designed to work on
  837. top of RCS Version 4, but will parse older RCS formats with the
  838. loss of CVS's fancier features. For further details, see Berliner,
  839. Brian, `CVS-II: Parallelizing Software Development,' Proceedings of
  840. the Winter 1990 USENIX Association Conference.
  841. * BASH
  842. The GNU Shell, Bash (for Bourne Again SHell), provides
  843. compatibility with the Unix `sh' and provides many extensions found
  844. in `csh' and `ksh'. It has job control, `csh'-style command
  845. history, command-line editing (with Emacs and vi modes built-in and
  846. the ability to rebind keys).
  847. * `diff' and `grep'
  848. These programs are GNU's versions of the Unix programs of the same
  849. name. They are much faster than their Unix counterparts.
  850. * Ghostscript and `gnuplot'
  851. Ghostscript is GNU's graphics language. It is almost fully
  852. compatible with the PostScript language. It supports X version 11.
  853. Right now, Ghostscript will accept commands in Postscript and
  854. execute them by drawing on an X window.
  855. Ghostscript also includes a C-callable graphics library (for client
  856. programs that don't want to deal with the Postscript language), and
  857. also supports IBM PCs and compatibles with EGA graphics (but please
  858. don't ask the FSF staff any questions about this; we don't use PCs
  859. and don't have time to learn anything about them).
  860. `gnuplot' is an interactive program for plotting mathematical
  861. expressions and data. Oddly enough, the program was neither done
  862. for nor named for the GNU Project---the name is a coincidence.
  863. However, we are distributing it anyway. If you can put us in
  864. contact with the author of this program, please do!
  865. * `g++', `libg++', NIH Class Library, and InterViews
  866. G`++' is a set of changes for GCC that compiles C`++', the
  867. well-known object-oriented language. This was the first compiler
  868. to compile C`++' directly instead of preprocessing it into C, with
  869. great benefits for debugging and efficiency. G`++' also was first
  870. with multiple inheritance and other new features later released by
  871. AT&T in `cfront 2.0'. Since G`++' depends on GCC, it must be used
  872. with the correspondingly numbered version of GCC. GDB version
  873. 3.`*' includes support for debugging C`++' code, which merges in
  874. the functionality of the old program GDB`+'.
  875. `libg++' (the GNU C`++' library) is an extensive and documented
  876. collection of C`++' classes and support tools for use with G`++'.
  877. The NIH Class Library (formerly known as OOPS (Object-Oriented
  878. Program Support)) is a portable collection of classes similar to
  879. those in Smalltalk-80 that has been developed by Keith Gorlen of
  880. NIH, using the C`++' programming language.
  881. InterViews is an object-oriented, C`++' library to support the
  882. design and implementation of window-based user interfaces for X11.
  883. * GnuGo
  884. GnuGo allows the user to play the machine in a game of Go
  885. (Wei-Chi). It is an updated version of the program called Hugo.
  886. Contents of the X11 Tapes
  887. -------------------------
  888. The two X11 tapes contain Version 11, Release 4 of the MIT X window
  889. system. X11 is more powerful than, but incompatible with, the
  890. no-longer-supported Version 10.
  891. The first FSF tape contains the contents of both tape one and tape two
  892. >from the MIT X Consortium: the core software and documentation, and the
  893. contributed clients. FSF refers to its first tape as the `required' X
  894. tape since it is necessary for running X or GNU Emacs under X. (The
  895. Consortium refers to its first two tapes as the `required/recommended'
  896. tapes.)
  897. The second, `optional' FSF tape contains the contents of tapes three and
  898. four from the MIT X Consortium: contributed libraries and other
  899. toolkits, the Andrew software, games, etc. (The Consortium refers to
  900. its last two tapes as `optional' tapes.)
  901. VMS Emacs and Compiler Tapes
  902. ----------------------------
  903. We offer a VMS tape of the GNU Emacs editor, and a separate VMS tape
  904. containing the beta-test GNU C compiler. The VMS compiler tape also
  905. contains Bison (needed to compile GCC), GAS (needed to assemble GCC's
  906. output) and some library and include files. Both VMS tapes include
  907. executables that you can bootstrap from.
  908. Note that the DEC VMS C compiler has bugs and thus cannot compile GNU C.
  909. Please don't ask us to devote effort to additional VMS support, because
  910. it is peripheral to the GNU project.
  911. How to Get GNU Software
  912. ***********************
  913. All the software and publications from the Free Software Foundation are
  914. distributed with permission to copy and redistribute. The easiest way
  915. to get GNU software is to copy it from someone else who has it.
  916. If you have access to the Internet, you can get the latest software from
  917. the host `prep.ai.mit.edu'. For more information, read the file
  918. `/u/emacs/GETTING.GNU.SOFTWARE' on that host. Please note that the
  919. internet address of `prep' has changed to `18.71.0.38'.
  920. If you cannot get the software from a friend or over the net, or if you
  921. would like to contribute some funds to our efforts and receive the
  922. latest versions, the Free Software Foundation distributes tapes for a
  923. copying and distribution fee. See the order form on the inside back
  924. cover.
  925. There are also third party groups that distribute our software: people
  926. and organizations that do not work with us, but have our software in
  927. other forms. For your convenience, some of them are listed below.
  928. Please note that the Free Software Foundation is not affiliated with
  929. them in any way, and is not responsible for either the currency of their
  930. versions or the swiftness of their responses.
  931. These Internet sites provide GNU software for anonymous FTP:
  932. scam.berkeley.edu, itstd.sri.com, wuarchive.wustl.edu,
  933. wsmr-simtel20.army.mil (under `PD:<UNIX.GNU>'), bu.edu,
  934. bu-it.bu.edu, louie.udel.edu, nic.nyser.net, sauna.hut.fi,
  935. sunic.sunet.se, freja.diku.dk, ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp,
  936. cc.utah.edu (VMS GNU Emacs), and uunet.uu.net.
  937. Those on the SPAN network can ask rdss::corbet.
  938. Information on how to obtain some GNU programs using UUCP is available
  939. via electronic mail from:
  940. hao!scicom!qetzal!upba!ugn!nepa!denny, acornrc!bob,
  941. hqda-ai!merlin, ames!killer!wisner, uunet!hutch!barber,
  942. mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!ht!spt!gz, sun!nosun!illian!darylm,
  943. oli-stl!root, or info@uunet.uu.net.
  944. Ohio State also makes GNU programs available via UUCP. They post their
  945. instructions monthly to newsgroup `comp.sources.d' on USENET. Current
  946. details from Karl Kleinpaste `karl@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu' or
  947. `...!osu-cis!karl'.
  948. Information on getting floppy disks of GNU Emacs for the AT&T Unix PC
  949. (aka 3B1 or PC7300) is available from: `brant@manta.pha.pa.us' or
  950. `...!bpa!manta!brant'.
  951. Thank GNUs
  952. **********
  953. Thanks to the Japanese Unix Society for their donation of $10,000.
  954. Thanks to our Anonymous Contributor, and thanks to Hewlett-Packard for
  955. their donations of a $100,000 each.
  956. Thanks to Hewlett-Packard for their donation of six 68030 machines.
  957. Thanks to all those mentioned in GNUs Flashes and the GNU Project Status
  958. Report.
  959. Thanks to Bil Lewis, Dan LaLiberte, and the volunteers who
  960. have proofread drafts and suggested improvements to the `Emacs
  961. Lisp Reference Manual'; and thanks to Warren Hunt of Computer
  962. Logic Inc. for support.
  963. Thanks to the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, and its director,
  964. Professor Michael Dertouzos. LCS has provided FSF with the loan of a
  965. Microvax for program development.
  966. Thanks to the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory for invaluable
  967. assistance of many kinds.
  968. Thanks to Arnold Robbins and Dave Trueman for their continued work on
  969. `gawk' and the `gawk' manual.
  970. Thanks to Brian Kernighan of AT&T Bell Labs for invaluable assistance
  971. during the testing and debugging of `gawk', and for help in clarifying
  972. several points about the language.
  973. Thanks to Chris Welty and the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer
  974. Polytechnic Institute for splitting Dave Lawrence's salary with FSF and
  975. providing him computing facilities.
  976. Thanks to Prof. Christof Koch and the CNS Lab at Caltech for their
  977. support of Brian Fox and the use of their facilities.
  978. Thanks to the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science for
  979. allowing Mike Haertel to use their computers.
  980. Thanks to Information Systems and the Whitaker College Computing
  981. Facility at MIT for use of their machines for making our VMS master
  982. tapes.
  983. Thanks go out to all those who have either lent or donated us machines,
  984. including Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp. (TMC) for the Sun
  985. 4/110, K. Richard Magill for the AT&T Unix PC, Doug Blewett of AT&T
  986. Bell Labs for two Convergent Miniframes, CMU's Mach Project for the Sun
  987. 3/60, Intel Corp. for their 386 workstation, NeXT for a NeXT
  988. workstation, the MIT Media Laboratory for the Hewlett-Packard 68020
  989. machine, and SONY Corp. and Software Research Associates, Inc., both of
  990. Tokyo, for the SONY News workstations.
  991. Thanks to all those who have contributed ports and extensions, as well
  992. as those who have contributed other source code, documentation, and good
  993. bug reports.
  994. Thanks to those who sent money and offered help. Thanks also to those
  995. who support us by ordering manuals and distribution tapes.
  996. Free Software Foundation Order Form
  997. ***********************************
  998. This form is effective January 1990--June 1990.
  999. Prices and contents of tapes are subject to change without notice.
  1000. All software and publications are distributed with permission to copy
  1001. and redistribute.
  1002. TeX source for each manual is on the appropriate tape; the prices for
  1003. tapes do not include printed manuals.
  1004. All software from the Free Software Foundation is provided on an "as
  1005. is" basis, with no warranty of any kind.
  1006. Quantity Price Item
  1007. These four items for Unix systems,
  1008. on 1600 bpi 9-track tape in Unix tar format:
  1009. ________ $150 GNU Emacs source code and other software.
  1010. The tape includes:
  1011. * GNU Emacs (the extensible, customizable, self-documenting
  1012. real-time display editor)
  1013. * MIT Scheme (a dialect of Lisp)
  1014. * T, Yale's implementation of Scheme
  1015. * Bison (a free, compatible replacement for yacc)
  1016. * Hack (a rogue-like game)
  1017. * GNU Chess (a chess playing program with an interface to X).
  1018. * GDB (release version of the GNU source-level C debugger)
  1019. * The X window system (a window system for bitmap
  1020. displays written at MIT) (version 10r4)
  1021. ________ $150 GNU Beta Test software, for Unix systems.
  1022. The tape includes:
  1023. * GCC (the GNU C Compiler, including COFF support)
  1024. * G++ (the C++ front end to GCC)
  1025. * lib-g++ (the G++ class library)
  1026. * NIH Class Library (formerly known as OOPS)
  1027. * Interviews (C++ library to support X11 window systems)
  1028. * Bash (GNUs' Bourne Again SHell)
  1029. * Bison (a free, compatible replacement for yacc)
  1030. * Flex (Vern Paxson fast rewrite of lex)
  1031. * Ghostscript (a Postscript interpreter)
  1032. * Gawk (the GNU implementation of the AWK programming language)
  1033. * Gas (the GNU Assembler)
  1034. * GDB (beta version of the GNU source-level C debugger)
  1035. * Gnuplot (an interactive mathematical plotting program)
  1036. * Compress (a file compression program)
  1037. * RCS (Revision Control System)
  1038. * CVS (Concurrent Control System)
  1039. * GNU object file utilities (ar, ld, make, gprof, size, nm,
  1040. strip, ranlib, et al.)
  1041. * other GNU utilities (make, diff, grep, tar, et al.)
  1042. * Gnu GO (the GNU implementation of the game of GO)
  1043. * the freed files from the 4.3BSD-Tahoe distribution
  1044. ________ $150 Required MIT X Window System X11R4, core software and
  1045. documentation, and contributed client software.
  1046. ________ $150 Optional MIT X Window System X11R4, contributed software
  1047. including libraries, games, Andrew and toolkits.
  1048. These four items for Suns and other Unix Systems,
  1049. on QIC-24 DC300XLP 1/4 inch cartridge tape, Unix tar format:
  1050. ________ $175 GNU Emacs and other software, as in the first item.
  1051. ________ $175 GNU Beta Test tape, for Suns, as in the second item.
  1052. ________ $175 Required MIT X Window System X11R4, as in the third item.
  1053. ________ $175 Optional MIT X Window System X11R4, as in the fourth item.
  1054. These two items for VMS,
  1055. on 1600 bpi reel-to-reel 9-track tape in VMS BACKUP format:
  1056. ________ $150 GNU Emacs source code and binaries.
  1057. ________ $150 GNU C compiler source code and binaries.
  1058. Includes Bison and GAS.
  1059. The GNU Emacs manual, ~300 pages. The manual is phototypeset,
  1060. offset printed, and spiral bound; it includes a reference card.
  1061. ________ $15 A single GNU Emacs manual.
  1062. ________ $60 Box of six GNU Emacs manuals.
  1063. The following documentation:
  1064. ________ $1 One GNU Emacs reference card, without the manual.
  1065. ________ $5 Packet of ten GNU Emacs reference cards.
  1066. ________ $50 Gnu Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, ~550 pages.
  1067. (Not available until March 1990).
  1068. ________ $10 GDB Manual, ~70 pages, side stapled.
  1069. ________ $10 Texinfo Manual, ~100 pages, side stapled. Texinfo is GNU's
  1070. structured documentation system, included with GNU Emacs.
  1071. Texinfo is used to produce both on-line and printed documents.
  1072. This manual describes how to write Texinfo documents.
  1073. ________ $10 Termcap Manual, ~60 pages, side stapled. Documents the
  1074. termcap library and GNU's extensions to it. The GNU termcap
  1075. library is included with GNU Emacs.
  1076. ________ $10 Bison Manual, ~80 pages, side stapled.
  1077. ________ $10 Gawk Manual, ~100 pages, side stapled.
  1078. ________ $10 Make Manual, ~100 pages, side stapled.
  1079. --------
  1080. ________ Sub Total
  1081. ________ If ordering from Massachusetts: add 5% sales tax.
  1082. ________ If outside of North America and Hawaii, for shipping costs:
  1083. - for tapes or unboxed manuals, please add $15, and then add
  1084. $15 more for each tape or unboxed manual in the order:
  1085. ________ total $ for this item = $15 + $15 times number;
  1086. - for each box of Emacs manuals,
  1087. ________ please add $60.
  1088. ________ Optional tax deductible donation.
  1089. --------
  1090. ________ Total paid
  1091. Orders are filled upon receipt of check or money order. We do not have
  1092. the staff to handle the billing of unpaid orders. Please help keep
  1093. our lives simple by including your payment with your order.
  1094. Please make checks payable to Free Software Foundation. Mail orders to:
  1095. Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  1096. 675 Massachusetts Avenue
  1097. Cambridge, MA 02139
  1098. 617-876-3296
  1099. EFFECTIVE: January 1990 to June 1990
  1100. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1101. -------
  1102. | |
  1103. Free Software Foundation, Inc. | stamp |
  1104. 675 Massachusetts Avenue | |
  1105. Cambridge, MA 02139 USA | here |
  1106. | |
  1107. -------
  1108. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1109. enjoy -len