
ABOUT 0.19: !!!!! This is simply 0.18, patched for 0.99.12b and some
            small fixes/changes, mainly handling the binary writer and
            the added @ for procedure variables in plain-FPC mode.
                                                                             
Quick start guide. For the rest see

-xtdhst.txt         my private the historyfile. Not perfect, but reasonably
                    good.
-docs\xtdfpc.htm    HTML manual. Quite complete. In time will become a Tex
                     distr, with generated winhelp and HTML files.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 News. For old news see chapter 4
------------------------------------------------------------------------

- New util data2inc replaces ugly construct with msg2txt. Data2inc kan also
    be used as a kind of bin2obj. (Binary file to array of byte includefile)
   See devel/demo.txt for a short tour of the features.
- EDirTree now has an OOP pendant ODirTree. The standard file-searching(FileScan)
    part is ready, the treebuilding system not yet.
- At last I found the MP3 TAG structures. I put them in a EMP3 unit. +
    some demos (file2tag), and though it not uses unit emp3 fixmp3convention.
- Odirtree demos GPF when linking. Since anything using OBJPAS GPF's when linking
   since last monday (or late last week) I guess this is a problem of the
   compiler. Just run make to see if your current snapshot can link it.
   It can be worked around by running makeoop.bat in the demo directory. Check
   if the normal makefiles work first.
# Please also note that XTDFPC's makefile.fpc is slightly different from FPC's.
   Should be no problem, but don't try to "update" it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 Supported
------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Newest snapshot (right now, the 0.99.11 kind of snapshots) OR
- Last release, as far as possible (right now the last release is 0.99.10).

Tested targets are Linux and Go32V2, and the older utils have been briefly
tested under Borland Pascal. (0.18 not tested under Linux yet, as my HD lies
on a table somewhere in Seagate-Ireland)

I removed a lot of the 0.99.5 compat. stuff since 0.16, also some minor
0.99.8 workarounds are removed. However, some major 0.99.8 stuff (mainly the
old linux crt support in EWindow) is still there. The RTL has to be patched
and recompiled for 0.99.8 to run EWindow under Linux.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 SETUP
------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do you have to know:

----
3.1 Do you have a intel-platform processor? (All normal PC's including AMD K6's
                                         and Cyrix 686's, M-II's, Celerons etc)

If you have one, make sure {$define I386} is in the file syseq.inc, and
 remove all {$undef i386} statements in that file (at least until the line,
 do not write below that line).

If you don't, put {$undef i386} in the syseq.inc file, and remove all
{$define i386} lines. Skip step 1.2

------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2 Linux
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I removed the $DEFINE LINUX from syseq.inc. This work fine overhere.
Please report all problems (when the compiler selects GO32V2 under
Linux)

You can run the shell script linuxinst to remove CR characters from the
makefile and put some tabs in place, in case I forgot.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Other details (news from all older versions)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.17:
- Added Thomas NewGo32 (used to be called TOM32) package. Adapted the makefiles,
    merged the (few) docs.
- New directory system. .PP files in root have moved to demo/ which is easier
   for makefile generations.  A simple make compiles everything (reports an
   error on the end under linux for the file voxel, but that's a dos-only file)
- Make smart compiles the demos smartlinking. I'm currently playing with dynamic
   libs.
- sh-shellscript "linuxinst" cleans makefiles from #13( CR) and #$1A (EOF),
    and performs some tabbing. This will probably ease running under linux.
    (linuxinst; make smart) linuxinst compiles a pp-binary file fixmake which
    does the actual cleaning.
- Again a small bug fixed in EDirTree; Conditional FPK didn't exist anymore (by
   compiler), and BP compat code was linked in. This resulted into failure of
   the FileScan procedures under Linux. *Fixed*
- Quote wildcards if you pass them to utils like filefind under linux, otherwise
   the shell will expand them. (filefind . '*.mp3')
- The TEX documentation (unit epasstr is ready) still can't get converted to
  HTML. Problems with PERL and Latex2html delay it.

0.16:

- Small patches for 0.99.10 and 0.99.11. Some conditionals have disappeared
- A few small procedures for EPasStr.
- Lists.pas added from Brad Williams TLDos package.
- Removed 0.99.5 compability to make assembler readable again.

0.15:

- EPasStr has now support for ANSISTRING versions of ALL normal epasstr
   procedures. Alpha, but I don't expect a lot bugs.

- EPasStr has now an own helpfile, and is by far the biggest unit. 2800 lines.

- Revised BPGo32 a bit. Alexander Stohr also looked at it, and fixed some small
   things.

- The added LZW routines don't work yet. I've problems while debugging it with
   RHGDB 1.4, which seems to stumble on BlockRead commands. I just got RHGDB 1.
   4.7, and this seems to work with it (or it is the newer snapshot I installed)
   So it will be solved in time.

- Starting with this version, 0.99.5 support (specially the framestack construct)
   has been abandoned. Get a newer version (may I suggest 0.99.10 as base + a
   recent snapshot), or, if you use one of the more obscure targets, try to get
   a patched 0.99.5 without the framestack bug, or turn off assembler.

- Makefiles have been improved, however if you change the include files of
   QuoSetup in /devel, you have to "make" in that directory first, and then the
   global makefile. The global makefile doesn't execute devel/makefile.
  The system is not perfect, but starts becoming reasonable. I'm stilling
  maintaining the batchfiles though.


--- 0.14 and older :

- Bug in EWindow has been fixed. (starting with 0.11). With this version,
    EWindow should work fine generically. Only real problem is not being
    able to write to position (Width,Height) under Linux.

- EFIO.DelDir hasn't been really put through testing on a Linux machine. Use
    a scratch partition or ramdisk-system to test, just in case. Or run the
    program after compiling as a user.

- -Ou. You should be able to use -Ou for my programs and compilers. Simply
    because the compiler I used before FPC auto-enables it, and I'm used to it.
    I briefly checked some problem-spots, and everything should work.
    I yesterday compiled Windtest (and EWindow) with -O3, and everything
    still worked. (I now have used -Ou for a while, and haven't had any serious
    problems)
    -Ou however also engages triggers the optimizing code of the compiler, which
      isn't perfect yet afaik.

- EDate assembler is turned on for 0.99.9 (you need a november 10th or newer
   snapshot), off for 0.99.8

- The makefiles are still experimental. All improvements in the makefiles are
   welcomed. I'm not a real makefile-hero.

- Dos.FExpand is rather buggy under Go32V2. I fixed about 4 bugs, these are
   committed, and should be included in snapshots since 25 november. I
   included the working FExpand in devel/fexpand.inc. The EDirTree demos
   (specially FileFind,CDSIZE) rely on FExpand.

