9libs, new sam release, experimental wily release

["Mark H. Wilkinson" <mhw@kremvax.demon.co.uk>]

We would like to announce the release of the following bundles of code:

 * 9libs-1.0, a collection of libraries which emulate some parts of the
   Plan 9 programming environment under Unix and the X Window System.
 * sam-9libs, a new release of Rob Pike's editor, sam, which uses 9libs-1.0.
 * wily-9libs, an experimental release of Gary Capell's editor, wily, which
   emulates the functionality of Rob's editor "acme" from Plan 9. Again,
   wily-9libs uses 9libs.

9libs-1.0 is a repackaging of libXg, libframe and libregexp from the last
release of sam. It replaces the collection of Makefiles with a build
system which uses a GNU-style configure script and which will build
shared libraries using GNU libtool. The intention is to make it easier
to compile and install the libraries (and applications which use them)
on modern Unix systems. It also adds some new implementations of Plan 9
functions (notably the print() functions) which have been grouped with
libregexp into a new library called libplan9c.

sam-9libs is a new release of sam which links against the libraries
from 9libs-1.0. Other than changes in the build system there is only
one new feature: sam uses the value of the environment variable TABSTOP
to set the size of its tabstop. It is intended that this release of sam
become the "official" release: the version of samterm which Bell Labs
run on brazil uses a newer graphics model than that provided by libg
(and libXg). As such it is growing increasingly difficult for them to
support this older version.

wily-9libs is an experimental (as in "not official") release of
wily-0.13.43 which has been modified to build against 9libs. It also
adds an implementation of the Font builtin which more closely emulates
the same builtin in acme.

You can get the code from the following locations:

	ftp://netlib.bell-labs.com/netlib/research/9libs
	ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/unix/plan9

Why would you want to use this? Basically, it makes your life easier.
You can compile and install 9libs, sam and wily separately if you want.
You can also build the whole lot together: it's as simple as this:

	; gunzip -c 9libs-1.0.tar.gz | tar xf -
	; cd 9libs-1.0
	; gunzip -c ../sam-9libs.tar.gz | tar xf -
	; gunzip -c ../wily-9libs.tar.gz | tar xf -
	; ./configure
	; make

The build system also supports building for multiple architectures from
one directory tree.

Enjoy!

Mark Wilkinson <mhw@kremvax.demon.co.uk>
Bengt Kleberg <bengt@softwell.se>