uim 1.4.0-alpha Release Note
============================

About This Release
------------------

This distribution of uim 1.4.0-alpha is a preview release for testing
purpose. Since it may contain serious unknown problems, it should not be
used for important work. For such situations, use our latest stable
release uim 1.3.1.

This release is for internal improvement. The non-standards-conformant
Scheme interpreter of libuim has been replaced with newly developed
SigScheme to make a room for next leap. There is no user-visible feature
changes other than resource consumption reduction.

Please report us if you find a problem.

Homepage:            http://uim.freedesktop.org/
Mailinglist:         uim@freedesktop.org
Bug tracking system: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/


What's New
----------

  - The modified version of SIOD interpreter has been replaced with
    SigScheme 0.7.2

  - [CRITICAL] Fix GC crash on SPARC, IA-64, and possibly MIPS, Alpha, m68k, by
    introduction of libgcroots

See NEWS for the fully detailed changes.


Notes for Packagers and System Integrators
------------------------------------------

  - Use the bundled SigScheme, and do not depend on external SigScheme
    package. Since the SigScheme interpreter is completely embedded into
    libuim without linking to libsscm, and exposing no SigScheme-specific
    symbols regardless of environment-dependent symbol exportation control
    existence such as -export-symbols of libtool or version script of ld,
    no conflict with libsscm occurs

  - libuim links to libgcroots although SigScheme is embedded into
    libuim. Although libgcroots is also bundled in uim, it should be
    managed as a separated package since both libsscm and libuim which
    provided by separated package depends on it. Add
    '--with-libgcroots=installed' to configure options for uim to disable
    build and install of the bundled version of libgcroots

  - libuim ABI and so libtool-version has been updated due to the GC
    protection API change which required to fix the GC problem


Roadmap
-------

  - uim 1.5.0

    Release for internal simplification. No user-visible changes.

    The complicated C part of uim which prevents extensions, design
    improvements and automated input method tests will be turned into
    Scheme codes or optimized out.


  - uim 1.6.0 and later

    The time for drastic reconstruction. Many user-visible changes.

    The composer framework will be introduced for extensible IM
    development.


Thanks
------

Hans-J. Boehm and all authors of Boehm GC for the useful codes.

Tanaka Akira for letting me realize about the GC problem through the
presentation at Binary 2.0 Conference 2006.