Announcing XEmacs 20.3

XEmacs 20.3 is now available.  This is a version of Emacs derived
from Emacs version 19 from the Free Software Foundation.

This is a major upgrade from 20.2, containing many bugfixes and
enhancements.  If you are using XEmacs 20.0 or XEmacs 20.2 in any
flavor (including off of the Sun CD) you should consider upgrading
to 20.3.  XEmacs 20.3 should be at least as stable as 19.16.

The new features include additional support for Mule (Multi-language
extensions to Emacs), many more customizations, multiple frames on
TTY-s, support for multiple info directories, an enhanced gnuclient,
improvements to regexp matching, increased MIME support, and many,
many synches with GNU Emacs 20.

The XEmacs/Mule support has been only seriously tested in a Japanese
locale, and no doubt many problems still remain.  The support for
ISO-Latin-1 and Japanese is fairly strong.  MULE support comes at a
price -- about a 30% slowdown from 19.16.  We're making progress on
improving performance and XEmacs 20.3 compiled without Mule (which is
the default) is definitely faster than XEmacs 19.16.


You can get XEmacs via anonymous FTP from FTP.XEMACS.ORG (128.174.252.16).

	ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs-20.3/

or from the following mirrors:

	ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-20.3/
	ftp://ftp2.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-20.3/
        ftp://ftp.uu.net/systems/gnu/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.cenatls.cena.dgac.fr/pub/Emacs/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de/pub/editors/xemacs/
        ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/gnu/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/emacs/xemacs/
        ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/packages/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.technion.ac.il/pub/unsupported/gnu/xemacs/
        ftp://thphys.irb.hr/pub/xemacs/
        ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.usyd.edu.au/pub/Xemacs/
        ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/xemacs/
        ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/xemacs/
        ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/xemacs/

It may take a few days for the files to propagate to all of the mirrors.
(Mirror sites are encouraged to automatically check ftp.xemacs.org)

A complete list of features and improvements (NEWS), the complete list
of mirror sites, the current FAQ, and several other XEmacs related
items can be found at the XEmacs World Wide Web page:

	 	 http://www.xemacs.org/

As of this announcement, a number of binary kits are already available.
Please check the FTP site for details.  More should become available
over the next couple of weeks given sufficient interest.

Total disk space requirements are as follows:

			    without Mule            with Mule

Unpacked distrib               76 Mo                  90 Mo

Compilation                    102 Mo                 103 Mo

Due to increasing size, the source distribution has been split into
four files.

  README
	This file.

  README.executables
	Instructions for selecting and installing a precompiled binary
	kit.

  xemacs-20.3.tar.gz
	The core source distribution.  This file is about 13 megabytes 
	and contains the minimum possible source code to build
	XEmacs.  If you are on a slow and expensive connection, you
	might wish to build the online manuals and the bytecompiled
	lisp code yourself.

 xemacs-20.3-elc.tar.gz
	This file contains all the standard bytecompiled lisp.  If you 
	have a reasonable net connection, download this file with the
	core distribution and untar it in the same directory.

 xemacs-20.3-info.tar.gz
	This file contains the TeXinfo processed online manuals.  Note:
	if you wish to build these yourself, you will need a very new
	`makeinfo' program from the most recent texinfo distribution.
	If you download this file, untar it in the same directory you
	untarred the core distribution.

 xemacs-20.3-mule.tar.gz
	This file contains all of the Mule support code, both C source 
	and Lisp and supporting files.  If you wish to use the Mule
	internationalization features you will need it.  Untar this
	file in the same directory you untarred the core distribution.

Don't forget to set "binary" mode when transferring these files.  Unpack them
with some variation of the command
"gunzip -c xemacs-20.3.tar.gz | tar -pvxf -".

Due to the amount of change between 20.2 and 20.3 and the number of
unpatchable binary files changed, there is no patch between 20.2 and
20.3.  It would be on the order of the same size as the core source
file anyway.