==========================================================================

                          LhA Evaluation version 1.00

                                  20-Dec-1991

==========================================================================

  This is the first public release of LhA. There are some things worth
noting about this release:

1) The manual is not entirely complete, and has several dangling
   references to commands and options that are not available in the
   evaluation version. I apologise for this and blame it on my studies;
   I had several exams this week and I am going home for christmas today,
   so I am under `slight' time pressure here...

2) The freshen command is not implemented, same reason as above.

3) The recursive file collection and file collection in general with
   many patterns may be slow, this is because of the way the file
   collection currently work, try to group several patterns into one
   with parantheses whenever possible. For example:

   lha a ram:test (*.c|#[a-z].doc|*i*.asm)

   is equivalent to:

   lha a ram:test *.c #[a-z].doc *i*.asm

   but the first way of doing it is faster.

4) You must NOT have any name directory delimiter (`/') within parantheses,
   for example:

   (a*/*.c|lhi/*.c)

   Is an illegal pattern, and will possibly crash your machine. BEWARE!
   A check for this kind of error will be added in the next release.

   The above pattern could be made legal if rewritten like this:

   (a*|lhi)/*.c

5) Also, LhA will not issue a warning if the first action file does not
   exist, like in:

   lha a ram:test nonexistent1 nonexistent2

   If `nonexistent1' does not exist, LhA will not issue a warning, but it
   will for `nonexistent2' and all other non-existent files that are
   included on the command line.

   Also, a warning return code is not sent to the caller if one or more of
   the specified files are not found.

====

  All of the above will be fixed in the next release of LhA, which will be
  sometime in January 1992. These are not very important issues, and does
  not decrease LhA's functionality - I just think you should be aware of
  these details.

  There are some other things that can be of interest as well:

  o You may notice that compression progress indication `bursts', i.e. it
    is quite fast for a while and then it stops for a second or two, and
    then continues. This is because the routines that are run at that phase
    of compression has not yet been rewritten in assembler, and thus it is
    much slower. The registered-user version and the third public release
    of LhA will have the full-speed compression routines. The compression
    routines in this version are *NOT* fully optimized and I expect the
    speed to be considerably higher in the future. The registered-user
    version also requires less memory as well as being faster.

  o Compression is slightly looser for LhA than LZ on some binary files,
    no big difference though, generally 10-100 bytes per 100K. If you
    desperately need these bytes, use the -v0 option - but compression
    will then be slower.

  o I will not be available on UseNet/FidoNet until January 4th 1992, since
    I am going home over the christmas holiday. If you want to reach me
    during that period,  write a letter to the following address (any letters
    to this address after January 4th will be forwarded to my current address
    automatically, so you can write to this address even if you're not sure
    when the letter will arrive):

          Stefan Boberg
          Tynne Björke
          S-62023 Romakloster
          SWEDEN (Europe)

  o Also, please limit electronic mail before January-1992 since I will not
    be able to empty the mailboxes until then. If the mailboxes get too full
    some of your letters will expire and vanish into a black hole, and I
    won't even know about it!

====
     _       __
 /  (_`      ]_)
/   ,_)tefan ]_)oberg.