You are reading: README.TXT --------------------------- This file gives an overview of Perl for Win32 It includes the following: Conditions for use of Perl for Win32 Acknowledgements Platforms Supported System Requirements Differences between/additions to the UNIX version Listing of other documents in this Kit Submit comments and feedback on Perl for Win32 Where to get more information For information on installing Perl for Win32, please refer to the file "INSTALL.TXT". To see what has been included in this release of Perl for Win32, please see the file "RELEASE.TXT". Windows 95 users, be sure to check "WIN95.TXT". The entire Perl 5 manual can be viewed with your WWW browser of choice (i.e. Netscape) by opening the file "PerlW32.html" in the 'docs\Perl-Win32' directory. "Windows NT" is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conditions for use of Perl for Win32, PerlScript and Perl for ISAPI Packages ============================================================================ 'Perl for Win32', 'PerlScript', 'Perl for ISAPI', and 'ActiveWare' are trademarks of ActiveWare Internet Corp. Any use of these trademarks requires written permission from ActiveWare Internet Corp. Portions (C) 1995, 1996, 1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed by ActiveWare Internet Corp., http://www.ActiveWare.com This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or b) the "Artistic License" included in this kit. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this Kit, in the file named "LICENSE.txt". If not, we'll be glad to provide one. You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License, our interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. We consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is our interpretation of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding our intent, feel free to contact us. Of course, the Artistic License spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgments =============== Thanks to Larry Wall for making this possible, as well as all the perl5porters (especially Tim Bunce). Clark Williams from Intergraph and Dean Troyer from Honeywell for their work on porting Perl 4 to Windows NT, and their help in this port. Perl for Win32 Team: Dick Hardt, Douglas Lankshear. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Platforms supported =================== Perl for Win32 is currently available as a compiled binary for the following platforms: Intel 80x86 ALPHA The source code should compile on any platform supported by Windows NT. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements =================== To run Perl for Win32, you will need a computer running Windows NT Workstation/Server 3.5 or later, with at least 2 MB of disk space free. If you plan on building from the source, the amount of disk space required increases to at least 10 MB. Perl for Win32 was built using Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2. The source release of Perl for Win32 includes the source files and test scripts. There is also a makefile for building Perl for Win32 from the SDK. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Differences between/additions to the UNIX distribution ====================================================== This port of Perl for Win32 is based upon the UNIX distribution of Perl 5. Any modifications made to the UNIX distribution will be submitted to the UNIX porting team so that they may be included when their next port is released. Perl scripts written under UNIX terminate lines with a line feed. Win32, however, terminates text lines with two characters: a carriage return AND a line feed. Be warned: if you are moving Perl scripts over to your Win32 machine from UNIX, you may have some reformatting to do! Since not all of the functions from the UNIX version of Perl 5 have analogs in the Win32 realm, we've left some unimplemented! A list of all functions NOT implemented in this release can be found in "STATUS.TXT". ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listing of other documents: =========================== INSTALL.txt Instructions for installing Perl for Win32 LICENSE.txt The GNU "General Public License" and "Artistic License" PerlW32.html First page of Perl for Win32 HTML documentation, including the original Perl 5 Manual Pages, and our extensions to Perl 5. This file and the rest of the HTML pages are located in the 'docs\Perl-Win32' subdirectory. RELEASE.txt Perl for Win32 revision history, changes since last release, and plans for future releases. STATUS.txt List of unsupported functions and features. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submitting comments and feedback on Perl for Win32 ================================================== All questions, comments, and feedback can be sent to Perl-Win32-users@ActiveWare.com, or to the discussion list (see below for information on how to subscribe). Bug reports can be mailed to perl@ActiveWare.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where to get more info ====================== By Mail: ~~~~~~~~ If you are interested in the latest news on Perl for Win32, we have set up two lists: perl-win32-users - discussion list send mail to: ListManager@ActiveWare.com with: JOIN perl-win32-users as the message body or with: DIGEST perl-win32-users as the message body to join in digest mode perl-win32-announce - announcements send mail to: ListManager@ActiveWare.com with: JOIN perl-win32-announce as the message body In print: ~~~~~~~~~ There are two good books by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. about Perl: "Learning Perl", and "Programming Perl", both by Randal Schwartz and Larry Wall. O'Reilly's web site is http://www.ora.com. By Usenet Newsgroups: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.perl is your best place to get help on Perl, although it is soon to be depreciated in use, to be replaced by comp.lang.perl.announce and comp.lang.perl.misc. On the World Wide Web: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Perl Meta-FAQ (http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/perl/metaFAQ/metaFAQ.html) Perl5 Information, Announcements, and Discussion (http://www.metronet.com/perlinfo/perl5.html) PERL Man pages (http://www.metronet.com/0/perlinfo/perl5/manual/perl.html) Perl reference materials (http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/perl/perl.html) UF/NA Perl Archive (http://www.cis.ufl.edu:80/perl/) Via FTP: ~~~~~~~~ ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt351/ ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/ ftp://perl.com/pub/perl/ ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/ ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/ports/ ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/ ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/perl5/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------