
  N E W S
  =======

  This file summarizes *major* changes to the WML sources, i.e.
  between each *revision* (1.x -> 1.(x+1)).  Take this logfile
  for detailed information about user related or visible changes.
  ___________________________________________________________________________

  Major changes between 1.5 and 1.6:

      - Big source and installation tree cleanup: the configure
        option --enable-compat was removed, the files
        wml_include/OBSOLETE* were removed, the wml_p*/ subdirs
        were moved to wml_backend/wml_p*/, etc.  pp. And in
        addition to this reorganization the backends and
        auxilliary programs are now installed in PREFIX/lib/exec/
        instead of PREFIX/bin/.

      - Cleanup of include files: tag names were renamed
        (especially in wml::des::navbar) to avoid namespace
        conflicts, tags were merged (especially in
        wml::std::box), tags were generalized (especially the new
        wml::std::logo), double-defined tags were removed
        (especially wml::sup::stack and wml::usr::rse), etc. pp.

      - Revised a wrong design decision of the early days:
        Comments are now supported in Pass 1 and not in Pass 8
        and they are now supported in a more general way:
        EOL-mode (#) and Block-mode (/*...*/) comments.  This
        pass shift was done to get rid of comments as quick as
        possible. This way we now really can comment out _any_
        stuff and as a side effect processing is a little bit
        faster.

      - A new manpage was introduced: wml_tags(7), a permuted
        index of all defined WML meta-tags.

      - A lot of minor stuff was fixed, added or at least
        generalized: the WML -p, -V and -P options, RC-File
        parsing, HTMLfix quotation parsing, slice errors, etc.

  Major changes between 1.4 and 1.5:

      - New Platform Portability Test Suite: A PORTING.text
        script was added to the distribution which can be used to
        run a portability test and which displays a platform
        entry line on success which then can be added to the
        PORTING.L file. The PORTING text file now is
        automatically build out of the PORTING.L entries.

      - New GNU Autoconf option: ``--with-cc=PATH''. This
        equivalent to setting CC=PATH before running the
        ``configure'' script but follows the same idea as
        --with-perl=PATH.

      - The maintainer files for the packaging mechanisms of
        various Unix derivates have been added as
        wml_contrib/pkg/ for reference. Currently there are files
        for the FreeBSD Ports area, the Debian dpkg mechanism and
        the RedHat Package Manager.
    
      - Added new include file: wml::std::lang. This provides a
        high-level interface for multi-lingual support via
        Slices.

  Major changes between 1.3 and 1.4:

      - The source distribution again was cutted down by
        approximately 100 KB, especially by removing unnecessary
        database support for Meta-HTML in the wml_p2_mhc/*
        subtree.

      - Now Speedup mode (introduced in 1.3) is the default
        processing mode and the -s option now stand for --safe
        and can be used to use the slow but more safe
        forking-based approach of starting the Perl-based WML
        passes. The trick of the Speedup mode is that the
        frontend `wml' precompiles the Perl scripts into its
        memory and evaluates them with the current interpreter
        instead of using the system() call.

      - A new Curses-based frontend named WMd (WML Documentation)
        was added for nice and easy access to all WML manual
        pages (works correct even without correct MANPATH).  The
        reason is because WML has a lot of single manpages with
        non-trivial names and such a startup page simplifies
        access to the documentation.  The side effect is that you
        now need a SVR4-compatible Curses-library (like NCurses
        or S-Lang) to build WML. The used tool for browsing is
        iSelect which was added to the distribution under
        wml_aux/iselect/

      - The long-awaited internal <protect [pass=SPEC]>..</protect> 
        container tag was added. This can be used to protect
        *any* data from being processed by any WML pass.  While
        such protections can be applied after any pass, the final
        output data is unprotected after pass 9 only. Use this
        new feature for protecting page contents which would
        conflict with any WML functionality.

      - Now the long-awaited new wml::des::navbar killer include
        file replaces the old version. This is a complete new
        approach to create navigation bars. It is based on the
        idea of defining a grammar-like structure and let this
        structure be rendered later. The structure itself is
        completly independed of the used HTML markup code, so any
        type of navigation bar can be created. There is although
        additional support for rollover effects and Plain-Text
        variants.

      - Divert (WML Pass 5) now supports named leave tags, i.e.
        you can leave a divertion by name which has the effect of
        leaving it and all other divertions which were entered
        from within it. This way one can use a templates more
        then once in an input file.
    
      - Now ePerl and thus WML supports the Perl Locale
        environment which makes WML support international
        character sets, for instance in the <sc>..</sc> container
        tag from wml::des::typography

      - A new wml::des::preload include file was added
        for minimal preloading support of images.

      - Another frontend: WMb -- Website META Language Bug
        Reporting Tool.  This can be used to easily sumbit a bug
        report to the WML author.

      - System variables like WML_GEN_HOSTNAME now can be
        overwritten by -D options on the command line or in
        .wmlrc files. For instance this is useful to overwrite
        informations for the <info> tag from wml::std::info with
        correct values.

      - Various 3rd-party software upgrades:
        ePerl 2.2.8, Bit-Vector 5.0b1, Slice 1.2.7

      - Numerous minor enhancements, portability changes and
        bugfixes were done on the various WML passes and WML
        include files. See the file ChangeLog for more details.

  Major changes between 1.2 and 1.3:

      -  New options -s which speeds up processing by avoiding fork()s
      -  New feature in HTMLfix (pass 7): out-commenting HTML tags (<xx#>)
      -  New feature in HTMLfix (pass 7): post-indenting (<indent>)
      -  Cleanup of all WMk and WML options, including GNU long-options
      -  Enhanced WML -v1 output (table format)

  Major changes between 1.1 and 1.2:

      -  HTML tag overwrite support (via <tag*> and </tag*>)
      -  Pass 8 (HTMLStrip) overhauled (removed incorrect stripping)
      -  Pass 1 (IPP) enhanced (new __FILE__, __LINE__ and $(VAR) stuff)
      -  Perl compatibility changes ("use lib" replaced by "BEGIN/@INC" variant)
      -  New manual pages: wml_intro(7) and wml_tutorial(7)
      -  Cleaned up distribution [Step 2] (removed unnecessary stuff)
      -  Upgrade to ePerl 2.2.3

  Major changes between 1.0 and 1.1:

      -  Fixed command line argument bugs (especially -DXXX=YYYY)
      -  Changed GNU Autoconf option --with-closedworld to --with-openworld
      -  Cleaned up distribution [Step 1] (removed unnecessary stuff)
      -  Upgrade to Slice 1.2.4

