ANNOUNCE: Tcl/Tk 8.4b1 Core Release
Jeff Hobbs
July 5, 2002
The Tcl maintainers are pleased to announce the 8.4b1 releases of the
Tcl scripting language and the Tk toolkit. This is the first beta
release of Tcl/Tk 8.4. More details can be found below. As the first
beta, this signifies the feature freeze of 8.4.
We'd like to thank all those that submit bugs and patches as they are
the primary source of information for us to identify problems in the
core.
Where to get the new releases:
------------------------------
Tcl/Tk 8.4b1 sources are freely available in from the Tcl Developer
Xchange web site at (note nifty new URL):
http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.4.html
This web page also contains additional information about the releases,
including new features and notes about installing and compiling the
releases. The files are also available from the Tcl SourceForge
project's file distribution area:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10894
Binaries are available for Windows, Linux and Solaris as part of the
ActiveTcl batteries included release:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActiveTcl
For additional information:
---------------------------
Please visit the Tcl Developer Xchange web site:
This site contains a variety of information about Tcl/Tk in general,
the core Tcl and Tk distributions, and much more.
Thank you for your contributions:
---------------------------------
As usual, this release includes contributions from the Tcl community.
Tcl/Tk is maintained by the community, with the sources and bug
database at SourceForge:
Everyone is encouraged to participate in making Tcl an even better
language.
Summary of Changes since Tcl/Tk 8.4a4:
--------------------------------------
The following were the main changes in Tcl/Tk 8.4b1. A complete list
can be found in the changes file at the root of the source tree. The
more complete ChangeLog is also included with each source release.
This is a alpha release, so it included new features, as well as bug
fixes and corrections to erratic behavior. Below are only the most
notable changes. It has been a whopping 6 months since the last alpha
release, so I am really sticking to the main changes. Full info on
any TIPs are available at:
http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/
Documentation of new commands are available at:
http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.4/
Tcl
* (bug fix) tcltest syntax errors now raised (porter)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with 8.4 alpha, but not 8.3 ***
* (bug fix) [info level $level] now returns [namespace eval]
as documented (suchenwirth,sofer)
* (bug fix) expanded Tcl_FSMatchInDirectory to handle assorted [glob]
bugs in VFS. (darley)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with 8.4 alpha, but not 8.3 ***
* (new feature) [TIP 27] CONST-ified variable access functions (porter)
* (new feature) [TIP 62] command execution traces (lavana)
* (new feature) [TIP 80] expanded [lsearch] options (wilkason, fellows)
* (new feature) [TIP 85] custom result match in tcltest (markus, porter)
=> tcltest 2.1
* (new feature) [TIP 87] [interp recursionlimit] (trier)
* (new feature) [TIP 91] Tcl_Seek compatibility (fellows)
* (new feature) [TIP 99] new [file link] command (darley)
* (new feature) [TIP 102] [trace list] renamed [trace info] (fellows)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with 8.4 alpha, but not 8.3 ***
* (new feature) msgcat support for XPG4 locales; examination of
LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES environment variables (haible, porter)
=> msgcat 1.3
* (new feature) header files assume modern C compiler by default;
older compilers may need configuration (english)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* (new feature) TCLTK_NO_LIBRARY_TEXT_RESOURCES #define disables inclusion
of library code in resource fork on Mac. (steffen)
* (dead code) removed all use of matherr() (english)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* numerous other bug fixes
* several performance improvements, including a new memory allocator for
use with --enable-threads (AOL, hobbs) and optimizations of bytecode
execution (sofer)
Tk
* (feature change) [wm transient .t .t] now raises an error (dejong)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* (feature change) A transient toplevel now mirrors state changes
in the master. (dejong)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* (enhancement) Added msg catalog for UK English. (porter)
* (new feature) Utilities for -underline, ampersand magic (kovalenko)
* (new feature) [TIP 47] Reorganized Tk to allow usage in writing an X wm
(mckay, english)
* (new feature) [TIP 48] Added style engine (bonnet)
* (new feature) [TIP 82] -offrelief option for check/radiobutton (hipp)
* (new feature) [TIP 84] Full motion events upon request (hobbs)
* (new feature) [TIP 93] enhanced get/delete to accept accept multiple
range pairs (hobbs)
* (new feature) [TIP 94] Added -activestyle for [listbox] (hobbs)
* (new feature) [TIP 95] Added [wm attributes] command (hobbs)
* (new feature) [TIP 96] Added caret handling (hobbs)
* (new feature) [TIP 98] Enhanced photo compositing (fellows)
* (new feature) [TIP 104] generalized text undo/redo (callewart,hobbs)
* numerous other bug fixes
The full list of changes with attributions can be seen at:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=98150
This represents the feature freeze of 8.4. From here on there will be only
bug fixes until 8.4.0 (expected late summer), unless beta testing determines
that a new feature is significantly flawed.
--
Jeff Hobbs Tcl Core Release Manager
Jeff Hobbs
>
> Tcl/Tk 8.4b1 Release Announcement
...
> Summary of Changes since Tcl/Tk 8.4a4:
> --------------------------------------
>
> The following were the main changes in Tcl/Tk 8.4b1. A complete list
> can be found in the changes file at the root of the source tree. The
> more complete ChangeLog is also included with each source release.
> This is a alpha release, so it included new features, as well as bug
> fixes and corrections to erratic behavior. Below are only the most
> notable changes. It has been a whopping 6 months since the last alpha
> release, so I am really sticking to the main changes. Full info on
The part about this being an "alpha" release is of course incorrect and
a copy&paste error on my part from the last release announcement. 8.4b1
is of course the first beta release for 8.4, and as mentioned elsewhere
in the announcement signifies a feature freeze for 8.4. This release
comes just 4 months after the last 8.4a4 release.
--
Jeff Hobbs The Tcl Guy
Senior Developer http://www.ActiveState.com/
Tcl Support and Productivity Solutions
Join us in Sept. for Tcl'2002: http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/
Keiichi Takahashi
snip ...
> Summary of Changes since Tcl/Tk 8.4a4:
> -------------------------------------
...
> Tk
...
> * (new feature) Utilities for -underline, ampersand magic (kovalenko)
snip ...
I have a quesition in new feature of Tk.
Could you tell me what is 'ampersand magic' with simple example, if
possible? Thank you for your help!
Best Regards,
Keiichi
--
Keiichi Takahashi, bitWalk Co.,Ltd.
mailto:bit...@jcom.home.ne.jp
http://members10.tsukaeru.net/bitwalk/
Donal K. Fellows
> Could you tell me what is 'ampersand magic' with simple example, if
> possible? Thank you for your help!
"Ampersand magic" is a way of encoding the character to underline in a button,
label, menu etc. in the string. It is easiest to see how it works by looking at
an example:
If the string to show is "Save As..." and the letter to underline is the "A"
in "As..." then the ampersand-magic-ed string is "Save &As..."
If the string to show is "Quit" and the letter to underline is "Q", then the
ampersand-magic-ed string is "&Quit".
IIRC, this sort of thing came originally from Windows, and it is rather a good
idea because it makes it much easier to set up underlines for labels (where real
ampersands tend to be fairly rare), particularly compared with counting
characters to get to the right spot. I don't remember the exact details of Tk's
implementation but I think it is done through extra procedures and is just used
for strings for Tk's standard dialogs coming from the message catalog.
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ fell...@cs.man.ac.uk
-- There are worse futures that burning in hell. Imagine aeons filled with
rewriting of your apps as WinN**X API will mutate through eternity...
-- Alexander Nosenko <n...@titul.ru>
Stephen O. Lidie
> Keiichi Takahashi wrote:
>> Could you tell me what is 'ampersand magic' with simple example, if
>> possible? Thank you for your help!
> "Ampersand magic" is a way of encoding the character to underline in a button,
> label, menu etc. in the string. It is easiest to see how it works by looking at
> an example:
> If the string to show is "Save As..." and the letter to underline is the "A"
> in "As..." then the ampersand-magic-ed string is "Save &As..."
> If the string to show is "Quit" and the letter to underline is "Q", then the
> ampersand-magic-ed string is "&Quit".
Ouch. Perl/Tk has used ^ for years now. Is the choice of & final, or could it be negotiated? (;
Thanks,
Steve
Keiichi Takahashi
Thank you so much for detail description about "& magic", Donal!
> IIRC, this sort of thing came originally from Windows, and it is rather a good
> idea because it makes it much easier to set up underlines for labels (where real
> ampersands tend to be fairly rare), particularly compared with counting
> characters to get to the right spot. I don't remember the exact details of Tk's
> implementation but I think it is done through extra procedures and is just used
> for strings for Tk's standard dialogs coming from the message catalog.
Above is what I had guessed at the first time, then I tried some with
Tcl/Tk8.4b1. One of some is like:
.mn add cascade -label "&File"
in building menu widget, but the magic of & seems *not* working.
Is the magic working *only* in the message catalog, msgcat? I have not
tried this magic with msgcat yet.
Or, I am afraid something wrong in my Tcl/Tk.... Thank you.
Keiichi Takahashi
>> Above is what I had guessed at the first time, then I tried some with
>> Tcl/Tk8.4b1. One of some is like:
>>
>> .mn add cascade -label "&File"
>>
>> in building menu widget, but the magic of & seems *not* working.
>
>
> It's not functionality built directly into the widgets themselves, but
> rather implemented by some scripts. The details of this are what I
> don't currently remember (which is why I didn't point them out)
>
>
>> Is the magic working *only* in the message catalog, msgcat? I have
>> not tried this magic with msgcat yet. Or, I am afraid something
>> wrong in my Tcl/Tk.... Thank you.
>
>
> IIRC, the scripts that implement the Tk standard dialogs have been
> updated so that after obtaining the strings from the message catalog
> they run them through an additional processor that derives the
> underline position following the magic-ampersand rules. Checking the
> source... Yes, there's a new procedure ::tk::SetAmpText which does
> the trick. The following snippet comes from the [tk_getOpenFile]
> implementation...
>
> ::tk::SetAmpText $data(okBtn) [mc "&Open"]
>
> Donal.
Thank you for your kind information.
The magic seems certainly working as far as checking standard dialogs
and seeing message catalogs in lib/tk8.4/msgs.
This magic is not for general purpose of msgcat, but for internal use of
standard dialogs of Tk. Is this correct?
Anyhow, this is a good news for me. Using this magic, it seems quite
possible to make Japanese message catalog for these standard dialogs,
since -underline option was big issue before.
Currently there is no ja.msg in it. I will make ja.msg and submit as
patch to SF, although my MSGedit does not work for new catalogs....,
well it's OK. Thank you.
Best Wishes,
Jack D
"Stephen O. Lidie" <lu...@Pandora.cc.lehigh.edu> wrote in message
news:agep3q$c...@fidoii.CC.Lehigh.EDU...
Actually, I think Steve meant the tilde "Save ~As" .... heck - HE wrote the
book! Nonetheless - he has a point, the & in perl is normally reserved for a
subroutine.
Jack...
David Gravereaux
>the & in perl is normally reserved for a
>subroutine.
The ampersand in titles for buttons/menus get's the underscore, at least in
Win32.
AppendMenu(hmenu, MF_STRING | MF_POPUP,
(UINT) hmenuLines, "&Lines");
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/userinput/keyboardaccelerators/keyboardacceleratorreference/keyboardacceleratormessages/wm_menuchar.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/resources/menus/menureference/menufunctions/appendmenu.asp
--
David Gravereaux <davy...@pobox.com>
Tomasoft Engineering, Hayward, CA
[species: human; planet: earth,milkyway,alpha sector]
Jeffrey Hobbs
> Donal K. Fellows <fell...@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Keiichi Takahashi wrote:
> >> Could you tell me what is 'ampersand magic' with simple example, if
> >> possible? Thank you for your help!
> > If the string to show is "Quit" and the letter to underline is "Q", then the
> > ampersand-magic-ed string is "&Quit".
>
> Ouch. Perl/Tk has used ^ for years now. Is the choice of & final,
> or could it be negotiated? (;
It is final, as it was proposed to align with Win32, which has used
the & for yonks to signify the underline char. However, it isn't
built into Tk itself - it's helper routines in the message catalog
stuff, so it can be easily adopted to remain ^ for Perl/Tk.
Stephen O. Lidie
And apparently it did me no good! Yes, it's a ~. Jeff has since informed me that
the change is final, but it's easily changed for Perl/Tk. I'll suggest that we
use & and grandfather ~.
Thanks for watching out for the old guy, Jack (;
Steve
lvi...@yahoo.com
:Tcl
: * (new feature) msgcat support for XPG4 locales; examination of
: LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES environment variables (haible, porter)
: => msgcat 1.3
:
: * (new feature) header files assume modern C compiler by default;
: older compilers may need configuration (english)
: *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
:
: * (new feature) TCLTK_NO_LIBRARY_TEXT_RESOURCES #define disables inclusion
: of library code in resource fork on Mac. (steffen)
:Tk
:
: * (feature change) [wm transient .t .t] now raises an error (dejong)
: *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
:
: * (feature change) A transient toplevel now mirrors state changes
: in the master. (dejong)
: *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
:
:
I'm curious about the above items. Most other new features or incompatibility
items had TIP numbers associated with them. Were there TIPs for the above
6 items, or is there some types of changes, particularly relating to
compatibility, that do not need TIPs for implementation?
--
Tcl'2002 Sept 16, 2002, Vancouver, BC http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.
<URL: mailto:lvi...@yahoo.com > <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/ >
Donal K. Fellows
> This magic is not for general purpose of msgcat, but for internal use of
> standard dialogs of Tk. Is this correct?
I think so. It's not directly part of either the widgets or the msgcat package
for much the same reason that message catalogs are not directly part of the
widgets; it's too hard to predict what scripts it would break, and it is easy
enough to add the the scripts that want it. Perhaps the procedure that
implements this magic should be exposed sometime, but for now it's private to
Tk.
> Currently there is no ja.msg in it. I will make ja.msg and submit as
> patch to SF, although my MSGedit does not work for new catalogs....,
> well it's OK. Thank you.
Cool!
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ fell...@cs.man.ac.uk
-- A large ASCII art .sig is the Usenet equivalent of walking around in
public with your asscrack sticking out past the top of your sweatpants.
You be the judge. -- Mike Hoye <mh...@prince.carleton.ca>
Donal K. Fellows
[...]
> : * (new feature) Utilities for -underline, ampersand magic (kovalenko)
>
> I'm curious about the above items. Most other new features or incompatibility
> items had TIP numbers associated with them. Were there TIPs for the above
> 6 items, or is there some types of changes, particularly relating to
> compatibility, that do not need TIPs for implementation?
Speaking about the above feature only, it is only visible to people writing
message catalogs for the Tk library itself. Exposing it will require a TIP, but
it's currently private and (on reflection) quite possibly shouldn't have been
mentioned in the release announcement at all. Or at least only with a note that
it is still a private API.
Anton Kovalenko
> : * (new feature) Utilities for -underline, ampersand magic
> (kovalenko)
> :
> I'm curious about the above items. Most other new features or
> incompatibility items had TIP numbers associated with them.
> Were there TIPs for the above 6 items, or is there some types of
> changes, particularly relating to compatibility, that do not
> need TIPs for implementation?
I can say some words about "ampersand magic". These changes are internal
to tk. There are now some procedures in library/tk.tcl to extract
text and underline position from "text with a&mpersand" and configure
widgets accordingly. These procedures are now used in the
standard tk dialogs (file selection, color picker, message boxes) to
set widget labels, which may be translated via msgcat.
Also, Alt-Key handling for standard dialogs was changed a little, to
enable Alt-<non-ascii-letter> keys.
English-speaking user shouldn't notice any of these changes at all.
For other users, this is (IMHO) just a bugfix.
--
With Best Wishes, Anton Kovalenko /* http://kovalenko.webzone.ru */
#!/usr/bin/wish - best wish I have for you!
Joe English
>I'm curious about the above items. Most other new features or incompatibility
>items had TIP numbers associated with them. Were there TIPs for the above
>6 items, or is there some types of changes, particularly relating to
>compatibility, that do not need TIPs for implementation?
For many of them, you can find the details in the SourceForge.
Bug and FR trackers.
>: * (new feature) header files assume modern C compiler by default;
>: older compilers may need configuration (english)
>: *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
This one isn't really a new feature, it's more of a portability
enhancement. There are no user-visible changes at the Tcl level,
the only potential incompatibility is for people trying to
compile Tcl with 1980s-era C compilers. Full details here:
Tcl FR #565088 "Bring tcl.h into the 1990s"
http://sf.net/tracker/?group_id=10894&atid=360894&func=detail&aid=565088
--Joe English
Keiichi Takahashi
> I think so. It's not directly part of either the widgets or the msgcat package
> for much the same reason that message catalogs are not directly part of the
> widgets; it's too hard to predict what scripts it would break, and it is easy
> enough to add the the scripts that want it. Perhaps the procedure that
> implements this magic should be exposed sometime, but for now it's private to
> Tk.
Thank you, Donal. This makes sense to me.
>>Currently there is no ja.msg in it. I will make ja.msg and submit as
>>patch to SF, although my MSGedit does not work for new catalogs....,
>>well it's OK. Thank you.
>
>
> Cool!
Now, ja.msg has been almost made. Currently, I am checking the
translated messages, since there are some unexpected behaviour.
For instance, the wish console for Windows, there are unexpected
underlines at menu entry. I need to check more, anyhow I will submit
ja.msg soon. Thanks.
Best Regards,
lvi...@yahoo.com
According to Anton Kovalenko <a_kov...@fromru.com>:
:English-speaking user shouldn't notice any of these changes at all.
:For other users, this is (IMHO) just a bugfix.
Ah, how does tk recognize whether the developer intended an
menu item wants to display & - say in an entry like Q&A or whatever -
literally, rather than used as an underline indicator?
Donal K. Fellows
> Ah, how does tk recognize whether the developer intended an
> menu item wants to display & - say in an entry like Q&A or whatever -
> literally, rather than used as an underline indicator?
That's why it is not currently a general facility; for the domain of
internationalized messages used in the Tk script library, we don't believe we
need ampersands to display...
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ fell...@cs.man.ac.uk
"A while back I started adding movie reviews to the SEE ALSO sections of some
documentation I wrote. [...] As far as I know, those movie reviews are still
in the product. :-)" -- Bryan Oakley
Anton Kovalenko
> Now, ja.msg has been almost made. Currently, I am checking the
> translated messages, since there are some unexpected behaviour.
> For instance, the wish console for Windows, there are unexpected
> underlines at menu entry.
Ah! I'm sorry... :-(
I have completely forgotten about Windows-specific part of tk library. So,
there is no "magic ampersand" support for the wish console yet.
Of course, I'll fix it soon. It will be trivial, 'cause there is no
hardcoded <Alt-...> bindings for menu.
> I need to check more, anyhow I will submit ja.msg soon. Thanks.
--
lvi...@yahoo.com
According to Jeff Hobbs <Je...@ActiveState.com>:
:As the first
:beta, this signifies the feature freeze of 8.4.
Jeff, can you say a few words regarding the release plans for 8.4?
Knowing a time schedule may help people plan to their own extension
and application releases appropriately.
Jeffrey Hobbs
>
> According to Jeff Hobbs <Je...@ActiveState.com>:
> :As the first beta, this signifies the feature freeze of 8.4.
>
> Jeff, can you say a few words regarding the release plans for 8.4?
> Knowing a time schedule may help people plan to their own extension
> and application releases appropriately.
8.4b1 was July 5th.
8.4b2 should be August 5th.
8.4.0 should be September 5th.
I don't know of any major problems or issues that would impair the
above schedule at this time.
Michael Schlenker
> lvi...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>>According to Jeff Hobbs <Je...@ActiveState.com>:
>>:As the first beta, this signifies the feature freeze of 8.4.
>>
>>Jeff, can you say a few words regarding the release plans for 8.4?
>>Knowing a time schedule may help people plan to their own extension
>>and application releases appropriately.
>
>
> 8.4b1 was July 5th.
> 8.4b2 should be August 5th.
> 8.4.0 should be September 5th.
Michael Schlenker
Bruce Hartweg
Me too! (the b2 release)
Bruce
Michael Schlenker
Michael
Donal K. Fellows
> Jeff, can you say a few words regarding the release plans for 8.4?
> Knowing a time schedule may help people plan to their own extension
> and application releases appropriately.
There's been discussion about this in the past, and the plan is to get 8.4.0
released before the conference in September. Who knows, perhaps we'll even
succeed at this!
Donal.
--
"Everyone else is envisioning a future of 32-bit deep bump-mapped lizard-skin
scrollbars that adapt to the lusers mood by imperceptibly alpha-blending
through a range of chromatic combinations not repeating in 3^18 years. Needs
hardware acceleration, anaglyptic glasses, and 2 aspirin." -- Phil Ehrens
lvi...@yahoo.com
According to Donal K. Fellows <fell...@cs.man.ac.uk>:
:There's been discussion about this in the past, and the plan is to get 8.4.0
:released before the conference in September. Who knows, perhaps we'll even
:succeed at this!
What are some of the things that the Tcl community can do to assist so that
the release is on time and successful?
Two things that I can think of are:
Test the new release with any software you have written. Keep track of
the changes you need to make due to release incompatibilities and record
them on the wiki or at least here on comp.lang.tcl .
Ensure that Tcl/Tk runs on any of the platforms for which you have access,
reporting problems in configure/build/test/install/documentation/usage
to the SF.net bug reporting service.
Jeffrey Hobbs
> What are some of the things that the Tcl community can do to assist so that
> the release is on time and successful?
>
> Two things that I can think of are:
>
> Test the new release with any software you have written. Keep track of
> the changes you need to make due to release incompatibilities and record
> them on the wiki or at least here on comp.lang.tcl .
Send them to the SF bug db first, or here if you aren't sure that it
really is a bug. The wiki isn't as easy to track. But testing, testing,
testing is all that 8.4 needs now. The Mac sources still need some
polish, but otherwise application testing is currently the most important
thing.
Now is the time when people should really consider 8.4 something ready
to switch over to full time if you are starting a new cycle for your
software and are considering what version to use.
Michael A. Cleverly
> Test the new release with any software you have written. Keep track of
> the changes you need to make due to release incompatibilities and record
> them on the wiki or at least here on comp.lang.tcl .
#if (TCL_MAJOR_VERSION == 8) && (TCL_MINOR_VERSION >= 4)
#define Tcl_InitHashTableEx(x, y, z) Tcl_InitCustomHashTable(x, y, z)
#endif
was needed to compile Ck.
Ed Suominen
(19,000+ downloads since initial May 20 release) with no Tcl-based
problems*. My current version (0.9.9b) comes with Tcl/Tk 8.4b1, which I
was able to compile OK under VC++ 6.0, and I think I'm seeing a subtle
performance improvement over 8.4ax. (Placebo effect, perhaps? :-)
Nice work, Jeff et al.!
* For those who remember my sporadic lockup problem, the cause turned
out to be a defective hard disk on my development system!
/--- Ed Suominen ------------------------------\
|> Registered Patent Agent
|> Independent Inventor of EE Technology
|> Author, PRIVARIA Secure Networking Suite
|| Freely available at http://www.privaria.org
\--- http://www.eepatents.com -----------------/
Jeffrey Hobbs
> problems*. My current version (0.9.9b) comes with Tcl/Tk 8.4b1, which I
> was able to compile OK under VC++ 6.0, and I think I'm seeing a subtle
> performance improvement over 8.4ax. (Placebo effect, perhaps? :-)
Actually, no. Miguel Sofer continues his work on improving the internals
of the bytecode engine, and some mods went in between 8.4a4 and 8.4b1.