merged tcl 8.1 branch back into the main trunk

1 files changed, 387 insertions, 518 deletions

diff --git a/win/README.binary b/win/README.binary
index fc8d4a1..1112ef1 100644
--- a/win/README.binary
+++ b/win/README.binary
@@ -1,518 +1,387 @@
-Tcl/Tk 8.0.5 for Windows, Binary Distribution

-

-%Z% $Id: README.binary,v 1.3 1999/01/04 19:25:05 rjohnson Exp $ 

-

-1. Introduction

---------------- 

-

-This directory contains the binary distribution of Tcl/Tk 8.0.5 for

-Windows.  It was compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 using Win32

-API, so that it will run under Windows NT and Windows 95.  The

-information here corresponds to release 8.0.  This patch provides

-compatibility with [incr Tcl] 3.0.  Tcl 8.0 is a major new release

-that replaces the core of the interpreter with an on-the-fly bytecode

-compiler to improve execution speed.  It also includes several other

-new features such as namespaces and binary I/O, plus many bug fixes.

-The compiler introduces a few incompatibilities that may affect

-existing Tcl scripts; the incompatibilities are relatively obscure but

-may require modifications to some old scripts before they can run with

-this version. The compiler introduces many new C-level APIs, but the

-old APIs are still supported.  See below for more details.  This patch

-release fixes various bugs in Tcl 8.0, plus it adds a few minor

-features to support the TclPro 1.0 tool set and [incr Tcl] 3.0.

-Please check the changes file in the source release for details.

-

-This release also corresponds to Tk 8.0.5.  This is a major release with

-significant new features such as native look and feel on Macintoshes

-and PCs, a new font mechanism, application embedding, and proper

-support for Safe-Tcl.  See below for details.  There should be no

-backward incompatibilities in Tk 8.0.5 that affect scripts.

-

-Note: with this release the Tk version number skips from 4.2 to 8.0.

-The jump was made in order to synchronize the Tcl and Tk version

-numbers.

-

-2. Documentation

-----------------

-

-The best way to get started with Tcl is to read one of the introductory

-books on Tcl:

-

-    Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 2nd Edition, by Brent Welch,

-    Prentice-Hall, 1997, ISBN 0-13-616830-2

-

-    Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, by John Ousterhout,

-    Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-63337-X

-

-    Exploring Expect, by Don Libes,

-    O'Reilly and Associates, 1995, ISBN 1-56592-090-2

-

-Other books are listed at

-http://www.scriptics.com/resource/doc/books/

-http://www.tclconsortium.org/resources/books.html

-

-There is also an official home for Tcl and Tk on the Web:

-	http://www.scriptics.com

-These Web pages include information about the latest releases, products

-related to Tcl and Tk, reports on bug fixes and porting issues, HTML

-versions of the manual pages, and pointers to many other Tcl/Tk Web

-pages at other sites.  Check them out!

-

-3. Installation

----------------

-

-The binary release is distributed as a self-extracting archive called

-tcl80.exe.  The setup program which will prompt you for an

-installation directory.  It will create the installation heirarchy

-under the specified directory, and install a wish application icon

-under the program manager group of your choice.

-

-With the 8.0.3 patch release, we are no longer supporting use of

-Tcl with 16-bit versions of Windows.  Microsoft has completely dropped

-support of the Win32s subsystem.  If you still need 16-bit support,

-you can get win32s and the 16-bit thunking dll (tcl1680.dll) from the

-Scriptics web site at ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/misc.

-

-4. Summary of changes in Tcl 8.0

---------------------------------

-

-Here are the most significant changes in Tcl 8.0.  In addition to these

-changes, there are several smaller changes and bug fixes.  See the file

-"changes" for a complete list of all changes.

-

-    1. Bytecode compiler.  The core of the Tcl interpreter has been

-    replaced with an on-the-fly compiler that translates Tcl scripts to

-    byte codes; a new interpreter then executes the byte codes. In

-    earlier versions of Tcl, strings were used as a universal

-    representation;  in Tcl 8.0 strings are replaced with Tcl_Obj

-    structures ("objects") that can hold both a string value and an

-    internal form such as a binary integer or compiled bytecodes.  The

-    new objects make it possible to store information in efficient

-    internal forms and avoid the constant translations to and from

-    strings that occurred with the old interpreter.  We have not yet

-    converted all of Tcl to take full advantage of the compiler and

-    objects and have not converted any of Tk yet, but even so you

-    should see speedups of 2-3x on many programs and you may see

-    speedups as much as 10-20x in some cases (such as code that

-    manipulates long lists).  Future releases should achieve even

-    greater speedups.  The compiler introduces only a few minor changes

-    at the level of Tcl scripts, but it introduces many new C APIs for

-    managing objects.  See, for example, the manual entries doc/*Obj*.3.

-

-    2. Namespaces.  There is a new namespace mechanism based on the

-    namespace implementation by Michael McLennan of Lucent Technologies.

-    This includes new "namespace" and "variable" commands.  There are

-    many new C APIs associated with namespaces, but they will not be

-    exported until Tcl 8.1.  Note: the syntax of the namespace command

-    has been changed slightly since the b1 release.  See the changes

-    file for details.

-

-    3. Binary I/O.  The new object system in Tcl 8.0 supports binary

-    strings (internally, strings are counted in addition to being null

-    terminated).  There is a new "binary" command for inserting and

-    extracting data to/from binary strings.  Commands such as "puts",

-    "gets", and "read" commands now operate correctly on binary data. 

-    There is a new variable tcl_platform(byteOrder) to identify the

-    native byte order for the current host.

-

-    4. Random numbers.  The "expr" command now contains a random number

-    generator, which can be accessed via the "rand()" and "srand()" math

-    functions.

-

-    5. Safe-Tcl enhancements.  There is a new "hidden command"

-    mechanism, implemented with the Tcl commands "interp hide", "interp

-    expose", "interp invokehidden", and "interp hidden" and the C APIs

-    Tcl_HideCommand and Tcl_ExposeCommand.  There is now support for

-    loadable security policies, including new library procedures such as

-    tcl_safeCreateInterp.

-

-    6. There is a new package "registry" available under Windows for

-    accessing the Windows registry.

-

-    7. There is a new command "file attributes" for getting and setting

-    things like permissions and owner.  There is also a new command

-    "file nativename" for getting back the platform-specific name for a

-    particular file.

-

-    8. There is a new "fcopy" command to copy data between channels. 

-    This replaces and improves upon the not-so-secret unsupported old

-    command "unsupported0".

-

-    9. There is a new package "http" for doing GET, POST, and HEAD

-    requests via the HTTP/1.0 protocol.  See the manual entry http.n

-    for details.

-

-    10. There are new library procedures for finding word breaks in

-    strings.  See the manual entry library.n for details.

-

-    11. There are new C APIs Tcl_Finalize (for cleaning up before

-    unloading the Tcl DLL) and Tcl_Ungets for pushing bytes back into a

-    channel's input buffer.

-

-    12. Tcl now supports serial I/O devices on Windows and Unix, with a

-    new fconfigure -mode option.  The Windows driver does not yet

-    support event-driven I/O.

-

-    13. The lsort command has new options -dictionary and -index.  The

-    -index option allows for very rapid sorting based on an element

-    of a list.

-

-    14. The event notifier has been completely rewritten (again).  It

-    should now allow Tcl to use an external event loop (like Motif's)

-    when it is embedded in other applications.  No script-level

-    interfaces have changed, but many of the C APIs have.

-

-Tcl 8.0 introduces the following incompatibilities that may affect Tcl

-scripts that worked under Tcl 7.6 and earlier releases:

-

-    1. Variable and command names may not include the character sequence

-    "::" anymore: this sequence is now used as a namespace separator.

-

-    2. The semantics of some Tcl commands have been changed slightly to

-    maximize performance under the compiler.  These incompatibilities

-    are documented on the Web so that we can keep the list up-to-date.

-    See the URL http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/compiler.html.

-

-    3. 2-digit years are now parsed differently by the "clock" command

-    to handle year 2000 issues better (years 00-38 are treated as

-    2000-2038 instead of 1900-1938).

-

-    4. The old Macintosh commands "cp", "mkdir", "mv", "rm", and "rmdir"

-    are no longer supported; all of these features are now available on

-    all platforms via the "file" command.

-

-    5. The variable tcl_precision is now shared between interpreters

-    and defaults to 12 digits instead of 6; safe interpreters cannot

-    modify tcl_precision.  The new object system in Tcl 8.0 causes

-    floating-to-string conversions (and the associated rounding) to

-    occur much less often than in Tcl 7.6, which can sometimes cause

-    behavioral changes.

-

-    6. The C APIs associated with the notifier have changed substantially.

-

-    7. The procedures Tcl_CreateModalTimeout and Tcl_DeleteModalTimeout

-    have been removed.

-

-    8. Tcl_CreateFileHandler and Tcl_DeleteFileHandler now take Unix

-    fd's and are only supported on the Unix platform.  Please use the

-    Tcl_CreateChannelHandler interface instead.

-

-    9. The C APIs for creating channel drivers have changed as part of

-    the new notifier implementation.  The Tcl_File interfaces have been

-    removed.  Tcl_GetChannelFile has been replaced with

-    Tcl_GetChannelHandle.  Tcl_MakeFileChannel now takes a platform-

-    specific file handle.  Tcl_DriverGetOptionProc procedures now take

-    an additional interp argument.

-

-5. Summary of changes in Tk 8.0

--------------------------------

-

-Here is a list of the most important new features in Tk 8.0.  The

-release also includes several smaller feature changes and bug fixes. 

-See the "changes" file for a complete list of all changes.

-

-    1. Native look and feel.  The widgets have been rewritten to provide

-    (nearly?) native look and feel on the Macintosh and PC.  Many

-    widgets, including scrollbars, menus, and the button family, are

-    implemented with native platform widgets.  Others, such as entries

-    and texts, have been modified to emulate native look and feel. 

-    These changes are backwards compatible except that (a) some

-    configuration options are now ignored on some platforms and (b) you

-    must use the new menu mechanism described below to native look and

-    feel for menus.

-

-    2. There is a new interface for creating menus, where a menubar is

-    implemented as a menu widget instead of a frame containing menubuttons.

-    The -menu option for a toplevel is used to specify the name of the

-    menubar; the menu will be displayed *outside* the toplevel using

-    different mechanisms on each platform (e.g. on the Macintosh the menu

-    will appear at the top of the screen).  See the menu demos in the

-    widget demo for examples.  The old style of menu still works, but

-    does not provide native look and feel.  Menus have several new

-    features:

-        - New "-columnbreak" and "-hideMargin" options make it possible

-	  to create multi-column menus.

-	- It is now possible to manipulate the Apple and Help menus on

-	  the Macintosh, and the system menu on Windows.  It is also

-	  possible to have a right justified Help menu on Unix.

-	- Menus now issue the virtual event <<MenuSelect>> whenever the

-	  current item changes.  Applications can use this to generate

-	  help messages.

-        - There is a new "-direction" option for menubuttons, which

-	  controls where the menu pops up revenues to the button.

-

-    3. The font mechanism in Tk has been completely reworked:

-	- Font names need not be nasty X LFDs: more intuitive names

-	  like {Times 12 Bold} can also be used.  See the manual entry

-	  font.n for details.

-	- Font requests always succeed now.  If the requested font is

-	  not available, Tk finds the closest available font and uses

-	  that one.

-	- Tk now supports named fonts whose precise attributes can be

-	  changed dynamically.  If a named font is changed, any widget

-	  using that font updates itself to reflect the change.

-	- There is a new command "font" for creating named fonts and

-	  querying various information about fonts.

-	- There are now officially supported C APIs for measuring and

-	  displaying text.  If you use these APIs now, your code will

-	  automatically handle international text when internationalization

-	  is added to Tk in a future release.  See the manual entries

-	  MeasureChar.3, TextLayout.3, and FontId.3.

-	- The old C procedures Tk_GetFontStruct, Tk_NameOfFontStruct,

-	  and Tk_FreeFontStruct have been replaced with more portable

-	  procedures Tk_GetFont, Tk_NameOfFont, and Tk_FreeFont.

-

-    4. Application embedding.  It is now possible to embedded one Tcl/Tk

-    application inside another, using the -container option on frame

-    widgets and the -use option for toplevel widgets or on the command

-    line for wish.  Embedding should be fully functional under Unix,

-    but the implementation is incomplete on the Macintosh and PC.

-

-    5. Tk now works correctly with Safe-Tcl: it can be loaded into

-    safe interpreters.

-

-    6. Text widgets now allow images to be embedded directly in the

-    text without using embedded windows.  This is more efficient and

-    provides smoother scrolling.

-

-    7. Buttons have a new -default option for drawing default rings in

-    a platform-specific manner.

-

-    8. There is a new "gray75" bitmap, and the "gray25" bitmap is now

-    really 25% on (due to an ancient mistake, it had been only 12% on).

-    The Macintosh now supports native bitmaps, including new builtin

-    bitmaps "stop", "caution", and "note", plus the ability to use

-    bitmaps in the application's resource fork.

-

-    9. The "destroy" command now ignores windows that don't exist

-    instead of generating an error.

-

-Tk 8.0 introduces the following incompatibilities that may affect Tcl/Tk

-scripts that worked under Tk 4.2 and earlier releases:

-

-    1. Font specifications such as "Times 12" now interpret the size

-    as points, whereas it used to be pixels (this was actually a bug,

-    since the behavior was documented as points).  To get pixels now,

-    use a negative size such as "Times -12".

-

-    2. The -transient option for menus is no longer supported.  You can

-    achieve the same effect with the -type field.

-

-    3. In the canvas "coords" command, polygons now return only the

-    points that were explicitly specified when the polygon was created

-    (they used to return an extra point if the polygon wasn't originally

-    closed).  Internally, polygons are still closed automatically for

-    purposes of display and hit detection; the extra point just isn't

-    returned by the "coords" command.

-

-    4. The photo image mechanism now uses Tcl_Channels instead of FILEs,

-   in order to make it portable.  FILEs are no longer used anywhere

-   in Tk.

-

-    5. The procedures Tk_GetFontStruct, Tk_NameOfFontStruct,

-    and Tk_FreeFontStruct have been removed.

-

-Note: the new compiler in Tcl 8.0 may also affect Tcl/Tk scripts; check

-the Tcl documentation for information on incompatibilities introduced by

-Tcl 8.0.

-

-6. Known Bugs/Missing Features

-------------------------------

-

-- Blocking "after" commands (e.g. "after 3000") don't work on Win32s.

-- Clock command fails to handle daylight savings time boundaries for

-  things like "last week".

-- Background processes aren't properly detached on NT.

-- File events only work on sockets.

-- Pipes/files/console/serial ports don't support nonblocking I/O.

-- The library cannot be used by two processes at the same time under

-  Win32s.

-- There is no support for custom cursors/application icons.  The core

-  set of X cursors is supported, although you cannot change their color.

-- Stippling of arcs isn't implemented yet.

-- Some "wm" functions don't map to Windows and aren't implemented;

-  others should map, but just aren't implemented.  The worst offenders

-  are the icon manipulation routines.

-- Under Win32s, you can only start one instance of Wish at a time.

-- Color management on some displays doesn't work properly resulting in

-  Tk switching to monochrome mode.

-- Tk seems to fail to draw anything on some Matrox Millenium cards.

-- Send and winfo interps are not currently supported

-- Printing does not work for images (e.g. GIF) on a canvas.

-- Tk_dialog appears in the upper left corner.  This is a symptom of a

-  larger problem with "wm geometry" when applied to unmapped or

-  iconified windows.

-- Some keys don't work on international keyboards.

-- Grabs do not affect native menus or the title bar.

-- PPM images are using the wrong translation mode for writing to

-  files, resulting in CR/LF terminated PPM files.

-- Tk crashes if the display depth changes while it is running.  Tk

-  also doesn't consistently track changes in the system colors.

-

-There may be more that we don't know about, so be sure to submit bug

-reports when you run into problems.  If you have comments or bug

-reports for the Windows version of Tcl, please direct them to:

-

-Scott Stanton

-scott.stanton@eng.sun.com

-

-or post them to the newsgroup comp.lang.tcl.

-

-7. Tcl newsgroup

------------------

-

-There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the exchange

-of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications.  Feel free to use

-the newsgroup both for general information questions and for bug reports.

-We read the newsgroup and will attempt to fix bugs and problems reported

-to it.

-

-When using comp.lang.tcl, please be sure that your e-mail return address

-is correctly set in your postings.  This allows people to respond directly

-to you, rather than the entire newsgroup, for answers that are not of

-general interest.  A bad e-mail return address may prevent you from

-getting answers to your questions.  You may have to reconfigure your news

-reading software to ensure that it is supplying valid e-mail addresses.

-

-8. Tcl contributed archive

---------------------------

-

-Many people have created exciting packages and applications based on Tcl

-and/or Tk and made them freely available to the Tcl community.  An archive

-of these contributions is kept on the machine ftp.neosoft.com.  You

-can access the archive using anonymous FTP;  the Tcl contributed archive is

-in the directory "/pub/tcl".  The archive also contains several FAQ

-("frequently asked questions") documents that provide solutions to problems

-that are commonly encountered by TCL newcomers.

-

-9. Tcl Resource Center

-----------------------

-Visit http://www.scritics.com/resource/ to see an annotated index of

-many Tcl resources available on the World Wide Web.  This includes

-papers, books, and FAQs, as well as extensions, applications, binary

-releases, and patches.  You can contribute patches by sending them

-to <patches@scriptics.com>.  You can also recommend more URLs for the

-resource center using the forms labeled "Add a Resource".

-

-10. Mailing lists

-----------------

-

-A couple of  Mailing List have been set up to discuss Macintosh or

-Windows related Tcl issues.  In order to use these Mailing Lists you

-must have access to the internet.  To subscribe send a message to:

-	

-	wintcl-request@tclconsortium.org

-	mactcl-request@tclconsortium.org

-	

-In the body of the message (the subject will be ignored) put:

-	

-	subscribe mactcl Joe Blow

-	

-Replacing Joe Blow with your real name, of course.  (Use wintcl

-instead of mactcl if your interested in the Windows list.)  If you

-would just like to receive more information about the list without

-subscribing put the line:

-

-	information mactcl

-	

-in the body instead (or wintcl).

-

-10. Support and bug fixes

-------------------------

-

-We're very interested in receiving bug reports and suggestions for

-improvements.  We prefer that you send this information to the

-comp.lang.tcl newsgroup rather than to any of us at Sun.  We'll see

-anything on comp.lang.tcl, and in addition someone else who reads 

-comp.lang.tcl may be able to offer a solution.  The normal turn-around

-time for bugs is 2-4 weeks.  Enhancements may take longer and may not

-happen at all unless there is widespread support for them (we're

-trying to slow the rate at which Tcl turns into a kitchen sink).  It's

-very difficult to make incompatible changes to Tcl at this point, due

-to the size of the installed base.

-

-When reporting bugs, please provide a short tclsh script that we can

-use to reproduce the bug.  Make sure that the script runs with a

-bare-bones tclsh and doesn't depend on any extensions or other

-programs, particularly those that exist only at your site.  Also,

-please include three additional pieces of information with the

-script:

-    (a) how do we use the script to make the problem happen (e.g.

-	what things do we click on, in what order)?

-    (b) what happens when you do these things (presumably this is

-        undesirable)?

-    (c) what did you expect to happen instead?

-

-The Tcl community is too large for us to provide much individual

-support for users.  If you need help we suggest that you post questions

-to comp.lang.tcl.  We read the newsgroup and will attempt to answer

-esoteric questions for which no-one else is likely to know the answer.

-In addition, Tcl support and training are available commercially from

-NeoSoft (info@neosoft.com), Computerized Processes Unlimited

-(gwl@cpu.com), and Data Kinetics (education@dkl.com).

-

-11. Tcl version numbers

-----------------------

-

-Each Tcl release is identified by two numbers separated by a dot, e.g.

-6.7 or 7.0.  If a new release contains changes that are likely to break

-existing C code or Tcl scripts then the major release number increments

-and the minor number resets to zero: 6.0, 7.0, etc.  If a new release

-contains only bug fixes and compatible changes, then the minor number

-increments without changing the major number, e.g. 7.1, 7.2, etc.  If

-you have C code or Tcl scripts that work with release X.Y, then they

-should also work with any release X.Z as long as Z > Y.

-

-Alpha and beta releases have an additional suffix of the form b1 or b1.

-For example, Tcl 7.0b1 is the first beta release of Tcl version 7.0,

-Tcl 7.0b2 is the second beta release, and so on.  A beta release is an

-initial version of a new release, used to fix bugs and bad features before

-declaring the release stable.  An alpha release is like a beta release,

-except it's likely to need even more work before it's "ready for prime

-time".  New releases are normally preceded by one or more alpha and beta

-releases.  We hope that lots of people will try out the alpha and beta

-releases and report problems.  We'll make new alpha/beta releases to fix

-the problems, until eventually there is a beta release that appears to

-be stable.  Once this occurs we'll make the final release.

-

-We can't promise to maintain compatibility among alpha and beta releases.

-For example, release 7.1b2 may not be backward compatible with 7.1b1, even

-though the final 7.1 release will be backward compatible with 7.0.  This

-allows us to change new features as we find problems during beta testing.

-We'll try to minimize incompatibilities between beta releases, but if

-a major problem turns up then we'll fix it even if it introduces an

-incompatibility.  Once the official release is made then there won't

-be any more incompatibilities until the next release with a new major

-version number.

-

-Patch releases have a suffix such as p1 or p2.  These releases contain

-bug fixes only.  A patch release (e.g Tcl 7.6p2) should be completely

-compatible with the base release from which it is derived (e.g. Tcl

-7.6), and you should normally use the highest available patch release.

-

-As of 8.0.3, the patch releases use a second . instead of 'p'.  So, the

-8.0 release went to 8.0p1, 8.0p2, and 8.0.3.  The alphas and betas will

-still use the 'a' and 'b' letters in their tcl_patchLevel.

-

-12. Linking against the binary release

---------------------------------------

-

-In order to link your applications against the .dll files shipped with

-this release, you will need to use the appropriate .lib file for your

-compiler.  In the lib directory of the installation directory, there

-are library files for the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler:

-

-	tcl80vc.lib

-	tk80vc.lib

-

-13. Building dynamically loadable extensions

---------------------------------------------

-

-Please refer to the example dynamically loadable extension provided on

-our ftp site:

-

-	ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/misc/example.zip

-

-This archive contains a template that you can use for building

-extensions that will be loadable on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh

-systems.

+Tcl/Tk 8.1b3 for Windows, Binary Distribution
+
+RCS: @(#) $Id: README.binary,v 1.4 1999/04/16 00:48:06 stanton Exp $ 
+
+1. Introduction
+--------------- 
+
+This directory contains the binary distribution of Tcl/Tk 8.1b3 for
+Windows.  It was compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 using Win32
+API, so that it will run under Windows NT and Windows 95.  The
+information here corresponds to the second beta release of 8.1.
+
+2. Documentation
+----------------
+
+The best way to get started with Tcl is to read one of the introductory
+books on Tcl:
+
+    Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 2nd Edition, by Brent Welch,
+    Prentice-Hall, 1997, ISBN 0-13-616830-2
+
+    Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, by John Ousterhout,
+    Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-63337-X
+
+    Exploring Expect, by Don Libes,
+    O'Reilly and Associates, 1995, ISBN 1-56592-090-2
+
+Other books are listed at
+http://www.scriptics.com/resource/doc/books/
+http://www.tclconsortium.org/resources/books.html
+
+There is also an official home for Tcl and Tk on the Web:
+	http://www.scriptics.com
+These Web pages include information about the latest releases, products
+related to Tcl and Tk, reports on bug fixes and porting issues, HTML
+versions of the manual pages, and pointers to many other Tcl/Tk Web
+pages at other sites.  Check them out!
+
+3. Installation
+---------------
+
+The binary release is distributed as a self-extracting archive called
+tcl81.exe.  The setup program which will prompt you for an
+installation directory.  It will create the installation heirarchy
+under the specified directory, and install a wish application icon
+under the program manager group of your choice.
+
+We are no longer supporting use of Tcl with 16-bit versions of
+Windows.  Microsoft has completely dropped support of the Win32s
+subsystem.
+
+4. Summary of changes in Tcl 8.1
+--------------------------------
+The most important changes in Tcl 8.1 are summarized below. See
+the README and changes files in the distribution
+for more complete information on what has changed, including both feature
+changes and bug fixes.
+
+Internationalization.  Tcl has undergone a major
+revision to support international character sets:
+
+
+All strings in Tcl are now represented in UTF-8 instead of ASCII, so
+that Tcl now supports the full Unicode character set.
+The representation of ASCII characters is unchanged (in UTF-8 anything
+that looks like an ASCII character is an ASCII character), but
+characters with the high-order bit set, such as those in ISO-8859,
+are represented with multi-byte sequences, as are all Unicode
+characters with values greater than 127.  This change does not affect
+Tcl scripts but it does affect C code that parses strings.
+Tcl automatically translates between UTF-8 and the normal encoding for
+the platform during interactions with the system.
+
+In Tcl scripts the backslash sequence \u can be used to enter
+16-bit Unicode characters.  \o and \x generate
+only 8-bit characters as before.
+
+The fconfigure command now supports a -encoding
+option for specifying the encoding of an open file or socket.  Tcl will
+automatically translate between the specified encoding and UTF-8 during
+I/O.  See the directory library/encoding to find out what encodings are
+supported (eventually there will be an encoding command
+that makes this information more accessible).
+
+There are several new C APIs that support UTF-8 and various encodings.
+See the manual entry Utf.3 for procedures that
+translate between Unicode and UTF-8 and manipulate UTF-8 strings.
+See Encoding.3 for procedures that create new encodings and
+translate between encodings.  See ToUpper.3 for procedures
+that perform case conversions on UTF-8 strings.
+
+Binary data.  Binary data is handled differently in Tcl 8.1 than in
+Tcl 8.0.  Tcl 8.1 uses the UTF-8 facilities to represent binary data:
+the character value zero is represented with a multi-byte sequence, so
+that (once again) strings in Tcl 8.1 never contain null bytes.  This
+means that binary data is now accepted everywhere in Tcl and Tk (in
+Tcl 8.0 the support for binary data was incomplete).  If you have C
+code that needs to manipulate the bytes of binary data (as opposed to
+just passing the data through) you should use a new object type called
+"byte array".  See the manual entry ByteArrObj.3 for information about
+procedures such as Tcl_GetByteArrayFromObj.
+
+New regular expressions.  Tcl 8.1 contains a brand new implementation
+of regular expressions from Henry Spencer.  This new version supports
+almost all of the Perl extensions and it also handles UTF-8 and binary
+data.
+
+Multi-Threading.  Tcl 8.1 is multi-thread safe.  Each thread can
+contain several Tcl interpreters, but a given interpreter can not be
+accessed from more than one thread.  Each thread runs its own event
+loop, and you can post events to other threads. There is not yet
+support for tcl level use of threading except for a test
+command. (Compile tcltest and try testthread.)  Tk 8.1 is not yet
+multi-thread safe, and may never be due to limitations of Xlib.
+
+
+What's new in Tk 8.1
+
+The most important changes in Tk 8.1 are summarized below. See the
+README and changes files in the distribution for more complete
+information on what has changed, including both feature changes and
+bug fixes.
+
+1. Internationalization.  Tk has undergone a major overhaul to support
+the new internationalization features of Tcl.  The font package has
+been rewritten to support arbitrary Unicode characters; when you
+specify a particular font such as "Times 12" Tk may actually use
+additional fonts to display Unicode characters that don't exist in the
+font you chose.  Tk guarantees to find a way to display any Unicode
+character regardless of the font you selected, as long as there is
+some font in the system that contains the Unicode character.  The
+input method support in Tk has also been modified to support full
+Unicode characters.
+
+2. Send/DDE support.  The send command now works on Windows platforms.
+It is implemented using DDE and there is a new dde command that allows
+Tk applications to use DDE to communicate with other Windows
+applications.  send still doesn't work on the Macintosh.
+
+3. Configuration options.  There is a new library of C procedures for
+manipulating widget configuration options using Tcl_Objs instead of
+strings.  This should eventually make Tk much more efficient.  Label,
+button, checkbutton, radiobutton, and menu widgets have been modified
+to use the new library.  See SetOptions.3 for information on the new C
+APIs.
+
+4. More Tcl_Obj support.  Several additional C library procedures have
+been added to support Tcl_Objs.  See the manual entries 3DBorder.3,
+GetAnchor.3, GetBitmap.3, GetColor.3, GetCursor.3, GetFont.3,
+GetJustify.3, and GetPixels.3.
+
+Incompatibilities
+
+Although the 8.1 releases involve substantial changes to the
+implementation of Tcl and Tk, the changes should introduce few
+if any compatibility problems for Tcl scripts or extensions.  Here
+are the compatibility problems that we know of:
+
+The changes to the regular expression package required a few minor
+syntax changes in order to support all the new features:
+
+- Backslash inside brackets is an escape whereas before it was a
+  literal character.  To specify a literal \ in brackets you must
+  write \\.
+
+- Some escapes, such as \d, \s, and \w, now mean special things in a
+  bracket expression.  Other escapes , such as \D, \S, \W, \A and \Z,
+  are illegal.
+  
+- A { followed by a digit will no longer match those two characters.
+  Instead, it will start a bound.  Such sequences should be rare and
+  will often result in an error because the following characters will
+  not look like a valid bound.
+  
+- Backslash followed by an alphanumeric character is either an escape
+  or an error.  Several of the new escapes were treated as literal
+  characters in earlier versions of Tcl.
+  
+- The matching order has changed slightly.  Here is an explanation
+  from Henry Spencer:
+
+    Both the old package and the new package find the match that starts
+    earliest in the string.  Where things get tricky is when there is more
+    than one possible match starting at that point, different in either
+    length or internal details (that is, which subexpressions match where).
+
+    The old package examines possible matches in a complex but well-defined
+    order, and simply reports the first one it finds.  The new package
+    examines all possible matches simultaneously, and reports the longest.
+    For example, (week|wee)(night|knights) matches all of "weeknights".
+
+    When two possible matches are of the same length, priority is decided
+    based on getting the longest possible matches for early subexpressions,
+    with later subexpressions accepting whatever they can get.  This means
+    that either (wee|week)(kly|ly) or (week*)(k?ly) matches "weekly" as
+    week-ly, not wee-kly.  More subtly, when .*|a.c matches "abc", the .*
+    matches the whole string and the a.c doesn't even get a chance to
+    participate. 
+
+    When non-greedy quantifiers are used, things get more complicated.  If
+    all quantifiers in a regular expression are non-greedy, the exact same
+    rules apply except with "longest" replaced by "shortest" everywhere.
+    When greedy and non-greedy quantifiers are mixed, it's complicated and
+    difficult to explain.
+
+Known Problems With These Releases
+
+Both the internationalization support and the new regular expression
+package are large, complicated, and young, which means there are
+likely to be lots of bugs.  We need your help in finding and fixing
+problems.  This is particularly important for internationalization,
+since we don't have the right equipment or knowledge to test
+under very many conditions.  Here are some of the most glaring bugs
+or missing features that we know of:
+
+- We haven't been able to test input methods in Tk under Unix to be
+  sure that the full Unicode character set is being substituted
+  properly in %A substitutions.  This means that it probably doesn't
+  work.  We have been able to test under Windows and the Macintosh.
+
+- In Tk, PostScript generation does not work correctly for characters
+  outside the ASCII subset.
+
+- The threading for Tcl is brand new so there are likely to be bugs,
+  although it is based on early work done by Richard Hipp.  We have
+  done some testing on a multiprocessor Solaris machine, but none on
+  Windows or other flavors of UNIX on a multiprocessor.
+
+6. Known Bugs/Missing Features
+------------------------------
+
+- Clock command fails to handle daylight savings time boundaries for
+  things like "last week".
+- Background processes aren't properly detached on NT.
+- File events only work on sockets and pipes.
+- Files/console/serial ports don't support nonblocking I/O.
+- There is no support for custom cursors/application icons.  The core
+  set of X cursors is supported, although you cannot change their color.
+- Stippling of arcs isn't implemented yet.
+- Some "wm" functions don't map to Windows and aren't implemented;
+  others should map, but just aren't implemented.  The worst offenders
+  are the icon manipulation routines.
+- Color management on some displays doesn't work properly resulting in
+  Tk switching to monochrome mode.
+- Tk seems to fail to draw anything on some Matrox Millenium cards.
+- Printing does not work for images (e.g. GIF) on a canvas.
+- Tk_dialog appears in the upper left corner.  This is a symptom of a
+  larger problem with "wm geometry" when applied to unmapped or
+  iconified windows.
+- PPM images are using the wrong translation mode for writing to
+  files, resulting in CR/LF terminated PPM files.
+- Tk crashes if the display depth changes while it is running.  Tk
+  also doesn't consistently track changes in the system colors.
+
+There may be more that we don't know about, so be sure to submit bug
+reports when you run into problems.  If you have comments or bug
+reports for the Windows version of Tcl, please use our on-line bug
+form at:
+
+http://www.scriptics.com/support/bugForm.html
+
+or post them to the newsgroup comp.lang.tcl.
+
+7. Tcl newsgroup
+-----------------
+
+There is a network news group "comp.lang.tcl" intended for the exchange
+of information about Tcl, Tk, and related applications.  Feel free to use
+the newsgroup both for general information questions and for bug reports.
+We read the newsgroup and will attempt to fix bugs and problems reported
+to it.
+
+When using comp.lang.tcl, please be sure that your e-mail return address
+is correctly set in your postings.  This allows people to respond directly
+to you, rather than the entire newsgroup, for answers that are not of
+general interest.  A bad e-mail return address may prevent you from
+getting answers to your questions.  You may have to reconfigure your news
+reading software to ensure that it is supplying valid e-mail addresses.
+
+8. Tcl contributed archive
+--------------------------
+
+Many people have created exciting packages and applications based on Tcl
+and/or Tk and made them freely available to the Tcl community.  An archive
+of these contributions is kept on the machine ftp.neosoft.com.  You
+can access the archive using anonymous FTP;  the Tcl contributed archive is
+in the directory "/pub/tcl".  The archive also contains several FAQ
+("frequently asked questions") documents that provide solutions to problems
+that are commonly encountered by TCL newcomers.
+
+9. Tcl Resource Center
+----------------------
+Visit http://www.scritics.com/resource/ to see an annotated index of
+many Tcl resources available on the World Wide Web.  This includes
+papers, books, and FAQs, as well as extensions, applications, binary
+releases, and patches.  You can contribute patches by sending them
+to <patches@scriptics.com>.  You can also recommend more URLs for the
+resource center using the forms labeled "Add a Resource".
+
+10. Mailing lists
+----------------
+
+A couple of  Mailing List have been set up to discuss Macintosh or
+Windows related Tcl issues.  In order to use these Mailing Lists you
+must have access to the internet.  To subscribe send a message to:
+	
+	wintcl-request@tclconsortium.org
+	mactcl-request@tclconsortium.org
+	
+In the body of the message (the subject will be ignored) put:
+	
+	subscribe mactcl Joe Blow
+	
+Replacing Joe Blow with your real name, of course.  (Use wintcl
+instead of mactcl if your interested in the Windows list.)  If you
+would just like to receive more information about the list without
+subscribing put the line:
+
+	information mactcl
+	
+in the body instead (or wintcl).
+
+11. Tcl version numbers
+----------------------
+
+Each Tcl release is identified by two numbers separated by a dot, e.g.
+6.7 or 7.0.  If a new release contains changes that are likely to break
+existing C code or Tcl scripts then the major release number increments
+and the minor number resets to zero: 6.0, 7.0, etc.  If a new release
+contains only bug fixes and compatible changes, then the minor number
+increments without changing the major number, e.g. 7.1, 7.2, etc.  If
+you have C code or Tcl scripts that work with release X.Y, then they
+should also work with any release X.Z as long as Z > Y.
+
+Alpha and beta releases have an additional suffix of the form b1 or b1.
+For example, Tcl 7.0b1 is the first beta release of Tcl version 7.0,
+Tcl 7.0b2 is the second beta release, and so on.  A beta release is an
+initial version of a new release, used to fix bugs and bad features before
+declaring the release stable.  An alpha release is like a beta release,
+except it's likely to need even more work before it's "ready for prime
+time".  New releases are normally preceded by one or more alpha and beta
+releases.  We hope that lots of people will try out the alpha and beta
+releases and report problems.  We'll make new alpha/beta releases to fix
+the problems, until eventually there is a beta release that appears to
+be stable.  Once this occurs we'll make the final release.
+
+We can't promise to maintain compatibility among alpha and beta releases.
+For example, release 7.1b2 may not be backward compatible with 7.1b1, even
+though the final 7.1 release will be backward compatible with 7.0.  This
+allows us to change new features as we find problems during beta testing.
+We'll try to minimize incompatibilities between beta releases, but if
+a major problem turns up then we'll fix it even if it introduces an
+incompatibility.  Once the official release is made then there won't
+be any more incompatibilities until the next release with a new major
+version number.
+
+Patch releases have a suffix such as p1 or p2.  These releases contain
+bug fixes only.  A patch release (e.g Tcl 7.6p2) should be completely
+compatible with the base release from which it is derived (e.g. Tcl
+7.6), and you should normally use the highest available patch release.
+
+As of 8.0.3, the patch releases use a second . instead of 'p'.  So, the
+8.0 release went to 8.0p1, 8.0p2, and 8.0.3.  The alphas and betas will
+still use the 'a' and 'b' letters in their tcl_patchLevel.
+
+12. Linking against the binary release
+--------------------------------------
+
+In order to link your applications against the .dll files shipped with
+this release, you will need to use the appropriate .lib file for your
+compiler.  In the lib directory of the installation directory, there
+are library files for the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler:
+
+	tcl81.lib
+	tk81.lib
+
+13. Building dynamically loadable extensions
+--------------------------------------------
+
+Please refer to the example dynamically loadable extension provided on
+our ftp site:
+
+	ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/misc/example.zip
+
+This archive contains a template that you can use for building
+extensions that will be loadable on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh
+systems.