ANN: Emacs on GNUstep / OS X 8.0-rc1

[Adrian Robert]

Hi all,

I've released the first "rc" version of Emacs for GNUstep / OS X at:

http://emacs-on-aqua.sf.net/


What is Emacs on GNUstep / OS X?
--------------------------------

GNU Emacs 20.7 ported to the Cocoa / GNUstep APIs.  Fully supports OS X
and GNUstep desktop environments and enhances Emacs by use of GUI
widgets for file operations, font selection, etc..


What's in Release 8.0-rc1?
--------------------------

This is a "release candidate" in the sense that a binary is provided and
it should be suitable for everyday use, however it is still beta
software.

Release highlights:

- menus including Services fully cleaned up and robust on OS X and 
GNUstep

- Emacs.app is now self-contained and relocatable

- various memory leaks and small bugs fixed

- installation from source simplified to running two scripts

- binary OS X package provided; GNUstep package will be released once
  the package format is finalized and Frederico's Installer app is ready


It is still necessary to use GNUstep from CVS (2005/03/06 or later),
however a separate patch is no longer needed.

Status respecting backends on GNUstep is unchanged: works on Xlib, has
rendering anomalies under Art.  Specifically, menus are rendered blank
when they change, and the letter 'f' is rendered in proportional spacing
(from NSString -drawAtPoint:withAttributes:) in all fonts tried (in some
cases the character after the 'f' must be 'i' or another 'f').
"defaults write Emacs GSBackend libgnustep-xlib" is necessary.

I have no idea whether the binary will work on Jaguar or Puma, but
compilation should work, assuming I haven't broken it in my usual
fashion.  ;-\

Hosting has now moved back to SourceForge.  However, CVS there is
not used, owing to potential conflict when source gets reintegrated
to the GNU Emacs tree.  Download the source from the "files" area.

Outstanding problems and release schedule: 16-bit fonts and a few
other minor font-handling and menu glitches are the main issues
still remaining.  If you want to hack on something, please email me
and I can point out where to start.  Once these issues get resolved,
8.0 final will come out and porting to Emacs-21 can begin.

BTW, if anyone knows a good developer-oriented Cocoa mailing list to
announce this to, let me know -- I'd like to get the word out to Mac
folks (who might also help with the development, since none of the
remaining issues with the port are GNUstep-specific).

-Adrian