This message announces the availability of Scheme Library release slib3a1.

New in slib3a1:

  SLIB 3 has undergone major development from SLIB2d6.

  Most noticeable is that SLIB now has a module system with documented
  semantics and a suite of reflexive tools for deriving reference and
  module dependencies from library code.  The reflexive tools are
  designed to support compiler-writer's needs as expressed in
  discussions arising from comp.lang.scheme in July 2003.

  The module semantics are intended to be compatible both with
  implementations having module systems and those lacking.  Ivan
  Shmakov has been striving to integrate SLIB's and Scheme48's module
  systems.  His efforts and SLIB's reflexive tools have found a great
  many bugs, some of them present since SLIB's beginnings.

  "make install" now creates a "slib" shell script for running various
  Schemes with SLIB initialization.  Currently supported
  implementations are gsi (Gambit), Guile, MzScheme, Scheme48, and
  SCM.

  The byte-number module converts between byte-vectors,
  twos-complement integers, and IEEE floating-point formats -- all in
  R4RS-compliant Scheme code.  It also converts byte-vectors to a form
  whose lexicographic ordering matches the encoded number's ordering.

  The correctly ordered byte representations of numbers tie in with
  SLIB's relational database being extended to include indexed
  sequential access methods (ISAM).  The Database-interpolation module
  uses sequential methods to synthesize continuous functions from
  discrete data tables.

    These "continuous databases" are vital to my soon-to-be-released
    optics program which calculates spectral responses of layered thin
    films.

  The character plotting utility has been improved, and is now
  complemented by eps-graph, a very flexible graphing library for
  producing encapsulated-PostScript files.

  SRFI-2, SRFI-8, and SRFI-9 are added.

  Although I have endeavored to support legacy usage, some programs
  will need modification to work with SLIB 3.  Some issues that I know
  of are:

  * REQUIRE no longer accepts a string as its argument.
  * The RANDOM module is split into RANDOM and RANDOM-INEXACT.
  * Some refactoring among TRANSACT, GLOB, and LINE-I/O.

				-=-=-

SLIB is a portable Scheme library providing compatibiliy and utility
functions for all standard Scheme implementations.

SLIB includes initialization files for Bigloo, Chez, DrScheme, ELK,
GAMBIT, MacScheme, MITScheme, PocketScheme, RScheme Scheme->C,
Scheme48, SCM, SCSH, T3.1, UMB-Scheme, and VSCM.

Documentation includes a manifest, installation instructions, and
coding guidelines for the library.  Documentation of each library
package is supplied.  SLIB Documentation is online at:

             http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html

SLIB is available from:
 http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scm/slib3a1.zip
 http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scm/slib-3a1-1.noarch.rpm
 swissnet.ai.mit.edu:/pub/scm/slib3a1.zip
 swissnet.ai.mit.edu:/pub/scm/slib-3a1-1.noarch.rpm

SLIB-PSD is a portable debugger for Scheme (requires emacs editor):
 http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scm/slib-psd1-3.tar.gz
 swissnet.ai.mit.edu:/pub/scm/slib-psd1-3.tar.gz

SCHELOG is an embedding of Prolog in Scheme+SLIB:
 http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/packages/schelog/

Programs for printing and viewing TexInfo documentation (which SLIB
has) come with GNU Emacs or can be obtained via ftp from:
 ftp.gnu.org:pub/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-4.0.tar.gz
