12mar11abu
(c) Software Lab. Alexander Burger


         Release Notes for picoLisp-3.0.6
         ================================

1. On the command line, debug mode can now enabled by appending a single '+' as
   the very last argument. This '+' will not be seen by the application, but
   switches on '*Dbg' before any other command line argument is processed.

   So the following three commands are equivalent:

      $ ./dbg myApp.l -main

      $ ./p myApp.l -main +

      $ pil myApp.l -main +

   The last line works only if "bin/pil" was copied to "/usr/bin", as
   recommended in the INSTALL file.

   The debug switch is also available for Ersatz PicoLisp:

      $ ersatz/picolisp myApp.l -main +

2. *Tsm, the transient symbol markup (the underlining of transient symbols) is
   now off by default. "lib/tsm.l" can be loaded to switch it on.

3. The interpreter does not exit automatically any more when an empty line is
   entered on the top level. To exit the interpreter, either Ctrl-D or and
   explicit call to (bye) is needed.

4. The 'fill' function now handles '^' symbols in the pattern specially. An
   expression following that symbol should evaluate to a list, which is then
   (destructively) spliced into the result. As before, if 'fill' is passed a
   second argument (a symbol or a list of symbols), then only those symbols are
   replaced in the pattern without any further treatment.

5. The name of the GUI function 'err' in "lib/form.l" was changed to 'error'
   (and also that of the corresponding default CSS type in "lib.css"). This was
   done to reserve the name "err" for standard error redirection (point 8).

6. The "opt/" directory (until now containing only a single "pilog.l" file), and
   "misc/pilog.l" were removed from the base distribution. They are now tracked
   separately. To install the addons, you can download them as a tarball from

      http://code.google.com/p/picolisp/source/browse/?repo=addons

   and untar them over the install directory.

7. The 'rpc' function was removed from the release. It is seldom used, and also
   redundant: (rpc 'foo ''arg) is equivalent to (pr '(foo 'arg))

8. A new function 'err' for standard error redirection is now available. It is
   analog to 'out', but accepts only a symbolic argument (like 'ctl').
