*****************************************************************************
NOTE:
This is an ALPHA version, it may not be entirely stable on your system,
depending on system type and configuration options.  I appreciate bug
reports, especially if you can diagnose the problem and tell me how to fix
it.  Otherwise bug reports may not be of much help.  The release notes are
still under construction.
*****************************************************************************

This is the 10th beta release (4.99j) of what will eventually become
the PLplot 5.0 distribution.  At this point I'm mainly trying to root out the
remaining bugs and system dependencies, but there will undoubtably be a
few improvements yet before the final version sees the light of day.

Please refer to the following files for more information:

README		General introduction, where to get more information, etc.
NEWS		This file
CHANGES		Log of changes to plplot in reverse chronological order.
ToDo		Describes what's on the agenda (no promises, however :-).
FAQ		Frequently answered questions.  
INSTALL		Installation notes

Also see the system-specific documentation under sys/<system-name>.
The manual is being updated!  More below.

You can get the PLplot distribution by anonymous ftp from:

	/anonymous@dino.ph.utexas.edu:/plplot

in .zip or .tar.gz form.  The most up-to-date (not very, at this point)
manual (in .ps and .dvi form) and info document files are available there as
well.


For more detail of these changes, consult CHANGES.

**************************************************************************
Version 4.99j: Summary of major changes
**************************************************************************

A massive update.  Major changes follow:

- A major upgrade of the configure scripts.  Now uses Autoconf 2.3 to
generate.  You can now build PLplot in an arbitrary temporary directory,
typing <path>/configure and then make.  This allows building from a
read-only file system, or setting up multiple build directories using
different build options simultaneously.  Help entries now available for all
recognized configure command line options.  Confusing a --with-<opt> with a
--enable-<opt> is now detected and flagged as an error.  The option to skip
loading the defaults file is now invoked by using --without-defaults or
--with-defaults=no to be more like typical configure parameters.  Added
--with-nobraindead (not for general use).  Better support of shared
libraries (in principle), and better handling of the install procedure.  Run
results are sent to the file config.summary, so you can type "ls config.*"
to see all the informational files created by configure.  Searches for
Fortran compiler if enable_f77=yes.  If that isn't found, switches to f2c.
If that isn't found, enable_f77 is set to "no" (Fortran interface layer is
omitted).  Added --with-dbmalloc, for linking with a debugging malloc
library.  Support generation of shared lib on Linux, using ELF tools.

- Better internal debug handling and reporting.  Files where DEBUG is
defined only generate debug output if the debug stream variable is
set (e.g. via -debug).  Uses stdarg capability, first time I've used
this in PLplot, so be on the lookout for portability problems with this.
If all goes well I have other uses of stdargs in mind.

*** To be finished later.. please consult CHANGES for more info. -mjl ***
