News Archive 13

There were a few minor problems which I hastily corrected. Luckily, since the new build system gives the distribution the extension tar.gz instead of tgz I got the link to it wrong so no one could have downloaded it anyway.

I’ve started more work on the documentation, but there’s still a long way to go.

Added element_printf(), element_out_str() now returns number of bytes written (and zero on error). Swapped type C and type D curves so that it matches the labeling in my thesis. Applied patch sent by Joe Cooley: many compilation warnings eliminated, uses GNU build system, and other miscellaneous improvements. Put code in a Git repository.

I wanted to add more but I decided to release sooner rather than later. High on my list is to improve the shoddy documentation.

The build system needs tidying. At the moment there is the GNU build system for various UNIX flavours, the legacy Makefile just in case, and a Makefile for mingw on Windows.

I also want to move platform-dependent code to separate files, rather than have a bunch of ifdefs. I like to have as little preprocessor code as possible in source files, and would prefer to delegate the problem of deciding which variant to use to the build system.

There are now three places to look for news. Firstly, the ChangeLog, generated by git, which will be updated with terse statements every time the source is edited. Secondly, this webpage, which I intend to make more like a blog: chatty and containing any items related to this project, not just release-related news (such as plans for the future). Lastly, the NEWS file, which shall be written with a library user in mind, as opposed to someone developing the library.