August 10, 2001

Announcement
============
  The members of the Components Team at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory <components@llnl.gov> are pleased to
announce the beta release of Babel, version 0.5.1.

What's New
==========
Patch Release:  
 + fixed all detectable memory leaks in regression tests 
 + babel script now tolerates being accessed through symbolic links
 + added additional babel101 documentation
 + fixed "./configure --disable-shared" option
 + fixed several memory leaks and one uninitialized pointer problem
 + fixed missing class/interface doc-comments in C++/F77

(See CHANGES for more details)

What Babel Is
=============
  Babel is designed to address problems of language 
interoperability, particularly in scientific/engineering
applications.  At the simplest level,Babel generates glue 
code so that libraries written in one programming language 
are callable from other programming languages.  Babel
generates this glue code from an interface description
written in SIDL, our Scientific Interface Definition 
Language.  Babel supports full Object-Oriented features
and exception handling even in non-OO languages such as C
or Fortran77.

Supported Languages
===================
  Babel currently supports calling libraries written in 
C, C++, or F77 from C, C++, F77, or Python drivers.
(Python also requires the Numerical Python set of 
extensions at http://numpy.sourceforge.net)

Supported Platforms
===================
Linux   - GCC 2.95.x
Solaris - GCC 2.95.x
(Many more expected in subsequent releases.)

Caveat
======
  Babel is research in progress.  This is a beta release 
looking for some friendly users.  Babel has bugs, there 
are too few examples, and the documentation is very thin. 

Availability
============
  The software is available for free download at
	http://www.llnl.gov/CASC/components

User Resources
==============
  Two email lists have been set up for the Babel community

	babel-users@llnl.gov  (unmoderated discussions)
	babel-announce@llnl.gov (announcements only)

To subscribe to one or both of these email lists, send
email to <majordomo@lists.llnl.gov> with the text
"subscribe babel-announce", "subscribe babel-users",
or both (one per line).  

Contacting the Authors
======================
  If you have any questions or concerns with the installation 
process or usage of Babel, feel free to contact the project team 
at components@llnl.gov.  To report bugs or suggest feature 
enhancements, please submit a report in the bug database at 
http://www-casc.llnl.gov/bugs/.

$Id: ANNOUNCE-0.5.1.txt 469 2001-08-08 22:10:29Z kumfert $