[118] in Release_7.7_team
Release Notes draft
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin M Cunningham)
Thu Jul 7 18:52:54 1994
To: release-77@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 18:52:30 EDT
From: Kevin M Cunningham <kcunning@MIT.EDU>
Howdy,
Here is a draft of what I have now. I put some questions/notes at the end.
In the final version of this document (i.e., after staff test), I will also
include some "non-release" information that will be of interest to general
users (e.g., new versions of Frame, Maple, Matlab, OLH, etc.) These are not
included here because (1) I didn't have time and (2) some of these changes
haven't actually happened yet.
--Kevin
============================================================================
ATHENA 7.7 RELEASE
7 July 1994
Kevin Cunningham
OVERVIEW
This month, Information Systems releases the latest version of the Athena
system, Release 7.7. This document describes the changes that general users
are likely to encounter on Athena as of Release 7.7, and also summarizes a few
changes of interest to programmers:
* Supported Architectures summarizes what workstation types now support
Athena, and what operating system changes were made as part of Release 7.7.
* Other Basic Athena Services describes minor updates to basic Athena services
such as AFS, X Windows, OLH, OLC, etc.
* Communicating with Other Users describes changes to MH (the default Athena
electronic mail handler) and dsmail.
* Text Processing describes updates to Emacs, LaTeX, Andrew/EZ, and Perl.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
If you are a software developer or someone else who would like to know the
technical details of the changes made in Release 7.7, you can look at the 7.7
System Release Notes. (That document includes technical details of the
information listed here, as well as many other changes not covered here.) You
can view that document via OLH:
athena% help @rel77:system
[NOT TRUE YET! Currently available only as:
/afs/rel-eng.athena.mit.edu/usr/builder/doc/7.7/rel77.tex]
===========================================================================
SUPPORTED PLATFORMS
The Athena Computing Environment is now supported on the following
architectures:
DECstation Ultrix 4.2A
IBM RISC/6000 AIX 3.2.3
SUN Solaris 2.3
This marks a change from Release 7.6 in several ways:
* While the DECstations remain at Ultrix 4.2 for this release, a few Ultrix
binaries (ntalkd, cp, mv, Xws) have been updated to 4.3 or post 4.3 (patch)
versions for this release.
* The RS/6000s have been updated from AIX 3.2.1 to 3.2.3. This included
building all of the Athena clients against AIX 3.2.3. Later in the Summer,
when an update procedure is available, the IBM-direct pieces of the operating
system (i.e., the non-Athena pieces only) will be updated to AIX 3.2.5. (The
3.2.5 version of AIX supports the GT1x graphics adapter which IBM now ships
with model 220's.)
* On Sun workstations, the underlying operating system has been upgraded from
Solaris 2.1 to Solaris 2.3, and all the Athena clients have been built against
the new version. Although some of the revised operating system algorithms
give the Suns a slightly different "feel", Solaris Release 2.3 on Athena is
much better than 2.1:
* Solaris 2.3 contains many bug fixes and is considerably faster,
especially in the network area.
* Many outstanding bugs in the Athena software running on Suns were
fixed.
* The Athena software was revised so that it need no longer be
compiled against a BSD-compatibility library but instead is
SYS-V compliant.
* The previously unavailable "server" parts of the Athena software
(ftpd, klogind, rkinitd, mkserv, etc.) have finally been ported and
incorporated in the release, making Solaris more desirable as a
private Athenized workstation.
* The X server used on the Suns is now a real X11R5 server rather than
an Open Windows one.
===========================================================================
BASIC ATHENA SERVICES
** AFS
The AFS client software has been upgraded to AFS 3.3. This version of AFS has:
* changes to the AFS cache-manager locking that improve the performance on
"slow" multi-user machines (e.g., Athena timesharing dialup servers)
* improved reliability and stability in the client software
* improved network characteristics
** X11R5 clients
All the X clients that we build (xmh, xclock, xterm, xcalc, and others in
/usr/athena/bin with names beginning "x") have been compiled against X11R5
rather than X11R4. (This is primarily a change on the DECstation platform, as
X clients on the other platforms were already compiled against X11R5.) This
does not include Motif binaries. [IS THIS TRUE?]
Note that X11R5 made a number of corrections to the default resource
specifications that might impact customizing users -- if you use a
~/.Xresources or ~/.app-defaults file, you may find your customizations
working slightly differently because the recently-changed default resource
specifications may now override your settings.
** Moira
The moira clients (moira, listmaint, mailmaint, and blanche) were moved to the
/afs/athena/system/moira directory. These clients are server dependent and so
need to be reviewed as the Moira servers change, which may not coincide with
the Athena release cycle. (Having these programs in the special "system"
directory -- which is not tied to the release cycle -- allows them to be
changed as needed.) Symbolic links were left in the old locations of these
clients to make this change transparent to users.
** OLH
The OLH suite of programs has likewise been moved to /afs/athena/system/olh to
allow changes to the programs outside of the release cycle. Symbolic links
were left in the old locations to make the change transparent to users.
** OLC
The source code used to build the OLC clients and servers in the release has
been updated from sources known to produce a working server. There are only a
few user-visible changes in the client (most notably, the addition of line
editing capabilities).
** Remote Access/Dialup: ktelnet and ktelnetd
The Kerberized remote-access programs ktelnet and ktelnetd have been made part
of the standard release, replacing the "standard" (but non-authenticating)
versions of these programs, telnet and telnetd. The new versions of the
program support more secure remote access. [NEED TO INCLUDE NOTE ON SCOPE OF
THIS CHANGE, AND ON HOW TO USE THE PROGRAMS]
===========================================================================
COMMUNICATING WITH OTHER USERS
** MH 6.8
All the MH electronic mail command line clients (e.g., inc, comp, send, etc.)
were upgraded from MH 6.6 to 6.8 on all platforms. (This also indirectly
affects the X Windows MH client, xmh). [NOT SURE WHAT THE CHANGES ARE.]
** New dsmail server
The dsmail server (for automatically posting e-mail messages to a discuss
meeting) has been updated with the ability to:
* chain transactions by subject
* recognize chaining to a transaction in a specific meeting
[NEED TO INCLUDE GUIDE TO HOW TO USE THE NEW FEATURES? OR JUST POINT
SOMEWHERE?]
===========================================================================
TEXT PROCESSING
** Emacs 18.59
Emacs has been upgraded from version 18.57 by merging Athena modifications
into the 18.59 sources. Version 18.59 of Emacs includes improvements to the
way cut-and-paste works, as well as a number of minor bugfixes.
Note that while version 18.59 of Emacs is not the latest available version
(version 19 is already available in the emacs19 locker), it *is* the most
advanced version that is not significantly different from the versions of
Emacs previously running on Athena. In other words, it is the latest version
that does not involve significant user interface differences.
* Tex/LaTex
A number of highly-visible changes were made to the TeX style files and some
of the TeX-related programs (dvi2ps, xdvi) that affect users of TeX and LaTeX
as of Release 7.7. These changes, some of which may actually make things seem
broken if you don't take appropriate actions, include:
* Style Files Updated -- Most of the TeX style files on Athena were
*very* old (newer styles have been made available by SIPB in their
tex-contrib directory, but not all users were aware of them). The
style files on Athena have been completely revised to include the
latest versions, including major additions (e.g., AMSLaTeX, useful
for typesetting scientific/mathematical documents, etc.)
* Style Files Moved -- In addition to adding new styles, the new
release reorganizes the styles, placing them in new locations that
make more sense. This might cause you to fail to find a style you
have been using before. Now, you *must* have either of the
following entries in your TEXINPUTS environmental variable to access
the style files when you run TeX or LaTeX:
/usr/athena/lib/tex/macros// (note the double slash), or
: (a colon on a line by itself)
* dvis2ps Replaces dvips -- dvi2ps was finally replaced with dvips
(which had been available for some time as an alternative). dvips
is a generally better program, but there are some differences:
* you don't have to pipe the output to the printer; dvips does that
automatically for you
* naming convention for fonts is different (newcen rather than ncs,
times rather than timrom, etc.) Be careful when you try to
specify an output font
Most Athena consultants are already familiar with dvips, as they
have been recomending it over dvi2ps for a while now.
* xdvi -- xdvi has also been upgraded. [CHANGES?]
* Support Added for 600dpi -- Support was finally added for the HP
printers, which can handle 600 dpi fonts.
** Andrew version 6.2
All the Andrew clients (ez, eos, grade, etc.) and other assorted files were
updated from version 5.2 to version 6.2. This release fixes many core dumps,
and there are only a few user visible changes.
*** User-Visible Changes
* Cut and Paste. In earlier version of EZ, you had to use the M-w
command to put a portion of highlighted text into the X cut buffer.
Now, EZ more closely follows the standard X conventions for
cut-and-paste between windows: when you highlight the text, it is
immediately copied into the X cut buffer, and is available to be
pasted without requiring any additional cut key-sequence.
* Hyperlinks. A new menu item, Insert hyperlink, has been added to
the Special menu card. This is a quick way of inserting a
hypermedia link into your EZ document. For more information, enter:
athena% ahelp hyplink
* Style guide in eos/grade. The operation of the Guide button in eos
and grade has been changed to bring up a style guide in an entirely
new (i.e., separate) EZ window. Previously, selecting Guide would
bring up the style guide in a new buffer within the *same* EZ window
as the eos/grade application. The new behavior prevents the style
guide from displacing the content of the grade window, and allows
you to quit from the style guide (or from eos/grade) without
affecting the other window.
Another aspect of this change is that now, when the guide cannot
find the style guide, instead of seeing an alert box warning of this
fact, a style guide comes up demanding an initial file. To recover
from this, you need to specify ANY arbitrary file to complete the
prompt (or type C-G to interrupt the prompt) and only then exit the
guide.
A new environment variable, "EOS_GUIDE" has been added to enable
other classes to specify their own style guide in the athena
.environment file of class members. For example:
setenv EOS_GUIDE /mit/2.10/notes.ez
*** Bug Fixes of Note
* The translators between EZ and RTF format (2rtf and rtf2) have
FINALLY been put into working order. You can now edit your
Microsoft Word documents in EZ when you have to, and edit your EZ
documents in Microsoft Word when you want to. For details on using
these tools select 2rtf or rtf2 from the Programs panel in ahelp.
* Whitespace is treated better when text is converted to ASCII by
ez2ascii.
* The bush hierarchical file browser no longer core dumps on the Sun.
*** New functionality
* Figure has been revised to include printing in landscape mode.
* Added FigureMatteColor preferences (default white) which overrides
the BackgroundColor preference for figure insets.
*** Of Interest to Power Users
* Support has been added for customizing the mapping of Andrew and X11
fonts to troff fonts. See atk/text/PrintFontMap.* for examples.
* Added CheckOwnerHome preference description. This value determines
whether a lookup is done in order to find the home directory of the
owner of a file being viewed by EZ. The file-owner's home directory
is used to fold the full pathname down to something shorter, like
~foo/bar for displaying in the title-bar of the EZ window. Defaults
to: yes.
** Perl 4.036
We upgraded from 4.019 to Perl 4.036.
===============================================================
LEFTOVER QUESTIONS:
* On the DECstation [Sun too?], the shutdown program was modified to call
zshutdown_notify. If you run shutdown on a DECstation, you'll now get
notified via zephyr.
* lpd filter fixes? included? what do they do?
* Zephyr p4 syncing? done? "sync source tree with running binaries; fixes for
speed and security"
* syslogd?
* What about this?--
From /mit/maple/bin_SUN_4_UNIX/bin_Sun_Solaris_2.3/start-maple:
# For Solaris 2.3 users, you may need to uncomment the following two lines
# XKEYSYMDB=/usr/openwin/lib/XKeysymDB
# export XKEYSYMDB
This should solve the problem for Maple.
In the last release, we copied the openwin XKeysymDB over the top of the one
in /usr/athena/lib/X11. However, I doubt this was the correct thing to do.
For the applications we compile, things are fine as they stand. It is
probably only third-party apps that will have any problem of this sort. And
the Right Thing for those applications is to have them look in
/usr/openwin/lib for that file, not the hack of the last release.
------- End of Forwarded Message
