Andrew Toolkit Release 5.1 The Andrew Toolkit Consortium of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science is pleased to announce the release of new versions of the Andrew User Environment, Andrew Toolkit, and Andrew Message System. The Andrew User Environment (AUE) is an integrated set of applications beginning with a 'generic object' editor, ez, a help system, a system monitoring tool (console), an editor-based shell interface (typescript), and support for printing multi-media documents. The Andrew Toolkit (ATK) is a portable user-interface toolkit that runs under X11. It provides a dynamically-loadable object-oriented environment wherein objects can be embedded in one-another. Thus, one could edit text that, in addition to containing multiple fonts, contains embedded raster images, spreadsheets, drawing editors, equations, simple animations, etc. These embedded objects could themselves contain other objects, including text. With the toolkit, programmers can create new objects that can be embedded as easily as those that come with the system. The Andrew Message System (AMS) provides a multi-media interface to mail and bulletin-boards. AMS supports several mail management strategies and implements many advanced features including authentication, return receipts, automatic sorting of mail, vote collection and tabulation, enclosures, audit trails of related messages, and subscription management. It also provides a variety of interfaces that support ttys and low-function personal computers in addition to the high-function workstations. Release 5.1 of Andrew contains many bug fixes, updates and improvements in both code and documentation. Release 5.1 also contains a variety of new facilities, including support for the new Internet MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) standards for multipart, multimedia mail. For more information on MIME, please see the CHANGES files in the ftp directory on emsworth.andrew.cmu.edu. This release can be obtained in several ways. The sources are available via anonymous ftp from the Internet host export.lcs.mit.edu (IP: 18.30.0.238) in the ./contrib/andrew tree. For details, see ./contrib/andrew/README. Andrew, as well as a variety of other CMU software, is also available via anonymous ftp from the Internet host emsworth.andrew.cmu.edu (IP: 128.2.30.62). For details, see ./README. For those having AFS access, the ftp directory is /afs/andrew.cmu.edu/itc/sm/releases/X.V11R5/ftp. The README file explains the directory structure and contents of the ftp'able software. Installation instructions are provided in INSTALL. See the CHANGES file in the top-level ftp directory for a summary of changes from Release 5.0 to 5.1. Remote Andrew Demo Service This network service allows you to run Andrew Toolkit applications without the overhead of obtaining or compiling the Andrew software. You need a host machine on the Internet, and you need to be running the X11 window system. A simple "finger" command will allow you to experience ATK applications firsthand. You'll be able to compose multimedia documents, navigate through the interactive Andrew Tour, and use the Andrew Message System to browse through CMU's three thousand bulletin boards and newsgroups. To use the Remote Andrew Demo service, simply run the following command on your machine: finger help@atk.itc.cmu.edu The service will give you further instructions. Information Sources Your bug reports are welcome; kindly send them to info-andrew-bugs@andrew.cmu.edu and we will periodically post a status report to the mailing list info-andrew@andrew.cmu.edu. To be added to the mailing list or make other requests, send mail to info-andrew-request@andrew.cmu.edu. Copies of the entire X distribution software can also be obtained, for the nominal distribution charge, by contacting: MIT Software Distribution Center Technology Licensing Office Room E32-300 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 USA +1-617-258-8330 We also distribute the following related materials: ATK and AMS sources and binaries on CDROM. Binaries are available for the following system types: IBM RiscSystem/6000 Sun SparcStation HP 700 Series DECstation ATK and AMS sources on QIC and Iotamat tapes Hardcopies of the documentation for ATK and AMS. Introductory video tape: Welcome to Andrew: An Overview of the Andrew System. Technical video tape: The Andrew Project: A Session at the Winter 1988 Usenix Conference. More information about these materials is available from: Information Requests Andrew Toolkit Consortium Carnegie Mellon University 4910 Forbes Avenue, UCC 214 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 USA phone: +1-412-268-6710 fax: +1-412-621-8081 info-andrew-request@andrew.cmu.edu The info-andrew unmoderated distribution list contains informal conversations between Andrew users and developers. Send mail to info-andrew-request@andrew.cmu.edu to be added to the Andrew mailing list (or to request any other service that we provide, such as hard copy documentation or redistribution of contributed materials). The info-andrew-bugs@andrew.cmu.edu address provides an easy method for reporting bugs in the software to the Consortium staff. There is also a netnews distribution list, comp.soft-sys.andrew, which is identical to the info-andrew distribution list except that it does not support the multi-media capabilities of info-andrew.