Emacs on Aqua version 8.0 released

[Adrian Robert]

Hi all,

After a long series of pre- and rc- releases, I've released emacs-on- 
aqua version 8.0.

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

In spite of the name, this port of GNU Emacs 20.7 runs on GNUstep (as  
well as OS X).

It is based on version 20.7, which is about twice the age of the  
current 21.3/21.4 release.  This means a much smaller, leaner emacs  
that still works well for many things, but one with more limited  
graphical and i18n capabilities and which some lisp packages are  
starting to become incompatible with.  Due to these limitations, this  
will be the final major release of Emacs-on-Aqua, and efforts are  
shifting to update the port to current GNU Emacs CVS.  (See http:// 
emacs-app.sf.net/)

The goal of emacs-on-aqua (and the upcoming Emacs.app) is to deliver  
the best possible emacs user experience on an OpenStep system.  From  
a user perspective, compared with a vanilla X11 emacs-21  
distribution, you'll notice:

- You have antialiased text, services, file dialogs, and a  
preferences panel.
- Color and font panels are available (but fontsets are not  
implemented).
- UTF-8 and Mac-Roman encodings have limited support.
- "Dead key" accent entry has limited support.
- LEIM is bundled.
- A version of tramp that works with 20.7 is bundled.
- A good Objective-C mode is bundled.
- Ispell is bundled on the Mac version.

GNUstep usage details:

- ART backend is recommended.  Non-latin display currently fails  
under xlib.
- If you have libfreetype >= 2.1.8, you need GNUstep CVS or 0.13 once  
that comes out.
- Rendering speed is now quite good (compared to earlier E-o-A  
releases), especially
  under Art -- comparable or better than X version.

You must build from source by changing to the GNUstep subdir and  
running ./compile.  Gnustep-make is not supported for various  
reasons.  Therefore some hiccups may be run into when compiling or  
linking.  It has been successfully built and run on Linux (Debian/ 
testing), FreeBSD, and NetBSD systems, but there could be problems  
even on these depending on library and path variations.  I'm not  
going to work on this any more myself, but will integrate patches if  
people submit them to me.

The same goes for crashes, etc..  I'd appreciate the reports  
(especially if you use the bug tracker on sourceforge; please title  
the bug with something like "GNUstep:" to help keep things  
straight ;) and will integrate patches, but I'm going to be focusing  
on the emacs 22/23 port from now on.

enjoy,
Adrian