25jun11abu
(c) Software Lab. Alexander Burger


         Release Notes for picoLisp-3.0.7
         ================================

1. Runtime files, like the line editor history and temporary directories, were
   moved to a ".pil/" directory in the user's home directory. The reason is that
   for a global installation of PicoLisp, neither the installation directory nor
   the current working directory can be assumed to be writable.

   The line editor history used to reside in the installation directory, in the
   file "@.picoHistory". It is now in "~/.pil/history".

   Temporary directories (with the PID as name) were created in a "tmp/"
   directory in the current working directory. They are now in "~/.pil/tmp/".

2. A local startup script './pil' was introduced, analog to the global
   "/usr/bin/pil" script. It replaces './p'. Instead of './dbg', it is
   recommended to use './pil +'.

3. An implementation of the 64-bit version for PowerPC (ppc64). Code generation
   could probably be further optimized, and there may be bugs. But self-assembly
   works, and the unit tests pass.

4. Changed the meta-character for function calls in URLs from '@' to '!' This
   was necessary, because '@' may conflict with home directory specifiers in
   path names.

   As a result, it may be necessary to fix existing applications. This involves
   usually changing things like "@start" and "@stop" to "!start" and "!stop" in
   all relevant places.

5. For Ersatz PicoLisp, the startup script's name was changed from "picolisp" to
   "pil", to be consistent with 'pil' in "real" PicoLisp.

6. There is a new prefix class '+UB' for '+Aux' relations. It maintains
   UB-Trees, which allow efficient range access to multidimensional data.
   Currently, only numeric keys are supported.
