reports of Lout's death somewhat exaggerated

[Jeff Kingston]

Dear Lout users,

Funny, I sent this email to the list yesterday but I
don't see it today.  Anyway here it is again.

Just to give you my view of the current state of Lout.

Lout still works, and I'm still here, but there have been no
new bug reports or requests for features for several years now.
I couldn't do much with them anyway at the moment, owing to
some changed family circumstances which have reduced the time
I have to work - unless there was something really wrong (but
we would have found that long ago).

I am currently working on a replacement for Lout which I call
Nonpareil.  Sadly, some years ago Nonpareil took a rather
dramatic detour into support for compilers for object-oriented
languages (which Nonpareil is).  I have worked on this for
years but nothing is available yet, nor will it be until I
am happy that it all hangs together.

When Nonpareil (the programming language) is working I will
go on to Nonpareil (the wysiwyg document editing system).
Around that time the project should open out into something
more collaborative.  But I'm too old and wise to predict
when that will be.

Jeff Kingston
address@hidden