GNU Smalltalk version 1.1.1
by Steve Byrne

The files in this directory and its subdirectories constitute the complete
source code for GNU Smalltalk.  The files are organized as follows:

.		The source files, both .st (Smalltalk) and C files
config		Various supported platforms
contrib		Contributed software
examples	Some working example Smalltalk files
test		Regression testing files
stix		SmallTalk Interface to X

About GNU Smalltalk

GNU Smalltalk attempts to be a reasonably faithful implementation of
Smalltalk-80 as described in the "Blue Book", also know as "Smalltalk-80, the
Language and its Implementation", by Adele Goldberg and David Robson.  The
syntax that the language accepts and the byte codes that the virtual machine
interprets are exactly as they appear in the Blue Book.  Most of the primitives
are the same as well, although due to the differing nature of the
implementation some of the primitives haven't been implemented, and other new
ones have been.


The current implementation has the following features:

  * Incremental garbage collector
  * Binary image save capability
  * C-callout (allows Smalltalk to invoke user-written C code and pass
    parameters to it)
  * GNU Emacs editing mode
  * Highly portable C code implementation
  * Optional byte code compilation tracing and byte code execution tracing
  * Automatically loaded per-user initialization files



Installing GNU Smalltalk

Please see the file mst.texinfo which contains the information on how to 
install GNU Smalltalk, and general documentation about the features of
the system.


Bugs

To report bugs or suggestions (or even offer assistance :-) ), send mail
to bug-gnu-smalltalk@prep.ai.mit.edu.  Bugs reported here will be echoed to the
gnu.smalltalk.bug newsgroup. 

Differences from release 1.1:  Primarily, the differences consist of bug fixes
to various things.  Some of the bugs fixed include:
	 display depth in stix
	 readline character pushback
	 duplicated code in mstcomp (timing code)
	 duplicated code in Makefile
	 couldn't make subclasses of Set and Dictionary
	 indexOfSubcollection: was doing bogus things
	 Collection>>detect: wasn't returning proper value
	 Point and Rectangle didn't have #= and #hash methods
	 Float #storeOn: was recursive
	 Integer #gcd: returned wrong value
	 #False ifFalse: didn't return block's value
	 processes were getting trashed around GC's
	 Manual updated with better instructions for using readline
	 Manual cross references (info node links) fixed
	 Manual indentations fixed
	 st.el requires shell mode now
	 st.el doesn't refer to ~/mst
	 String had two fileName methods

