TITLE

     Beginner's Guide to Amiga E

VERSION

     Edition 1.0.  Covers the latest (PD) version 2.1b of Amiga E.

AUTHOR

     Jason R. Hulance <jason@fsel.com> (or <m88jrh@ecs.ox.ac.uk>).

DESCRIPTION

     This Guide is intended to be complementary to the existing Amiga
     E documentation, and it is aimed at the beginner, rather than the
     more experienced programmer.  Amiga E is (currently) an Amiga
     specific programmming language, designed and implemented by
     Wouter van Oortmerssen.  It has become quite popular due to,
     amongst other things, its amazingly fast compilation speed and
     its similarity to C and Modula-2.

     The Guide is divided into three main parts: the first assumes
     very little knowledge of programming and progresses through the
     second to describe all aspects of the Amiga E language.  The
     third part is dedicated to some illustrative examples.
     Experienced programmers (who are new to Amiga E) may find the
     second part useful for learning the language, especially if read
     in conjunction with Wouter's documentation.

     The topics covered in Part One include procedures, variables and
     expressions.  Part Two builds on this, describing the type system
     (including the list and string types), quoted expressions,
     built-in functions, modules, exceptions and recursion.

     The Guide may also be used as a quick reference, since it
     includes both a language and a concept index.  The concept index
     is pretty exhaustive.  The language index covers all the language
     keywords and built-in functions, constants and variables.

     There are two forms of the Guide included in the archive: an
     AmigaGuide(R), hypertext version and an ANSI text version.  (The
     latter is the more suitable for printing, using standard Amiga
     printer drivers.)  Other forms are available (such as a more
     AmigaGuide-v34 friendly version) from the author (see below).

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

     To get the most from this you need the Amiga E package,
     obviously.  The current version is v2.1b and is Public Domain.
     You can find it in, for instance, the dev/e directory on any
     Aminet site.  If you don't already have a copy, try it: you might
     be very surprised.

     There is a text version of the Guide in the archive, so you don't
     need to use a hypertext viewer, but it is preferable.

HOST NAME

     Aminet.  For example, ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.2.1) in the UK.

DIRECTORY

     /pub/aminet/dev/e

FILE NAMES

     BeginnersGuide.lzh (200Kbytes)

PRICE

     Free.  A more AmigaGuide-v34 friendly version is also available,
     but separately from the author (to keep the archive size down).
     Also, a TeX dvi and a PostScript version are available for a
     small cost (five UK pounds).  They don't contain anything more,
     but are much nicer for printing (the cross references and
     indexes, especially).

DISTRIBUTABILITY

     The archive is freely distributable so long as it is complete and
     unaltered.  All versions of the Guide are Copyright (c) 1994,
     Jason R. Hulance.

OTHER

     Amiga E v3.0 is due out sometime soon.  Wouter has been doing a
     grand job extending and improving the language.  There are a lot
     of really exciting new features.  This Guide will hopefully be
     completely revised to cover the new version.  You, the reader,
     are strongly encouraged to help me improve it by sending me your
     criticisms.