This is README.1st for the binary distribution of lout-3.12, compiled
for MSDOS and Win32.  Compilation notes appear after an introduction
by Matthew Cepl.


What? LOUT? What's _that_?
--------------------------
LOUT is a typesetting, somehow similar to LaTeX, but with intention
(original author is Australian Jeffrey H. Kingston
(mailto:jeff@cs.usyd.edu.au) to be fairly smaller and less difficult to
tame than original LaTeX (not talking about troff) and with output to
plain PostScript (download GhostScript for preview --
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/).  Lout is distributed under the terms of
GNU General Public License, which you can read in the attached file
gnu.gpl.

There is a package of basic templates included with a comprehensive
manual for entry-level as well as advanced users.  Among other
interesting futures is lout's very well prepared international support
(for example, I am able to produce nice PostScript files in Czech
language -- just in the case, the Czech Republic is _not_ in former
Yugoslavia -- with just a Eastern European Type1 fonts added).

Homepage for lout, maintained by kind help of Valeriy Ushakov
(mailto:uwe@ptc.spbu.ru) is on URL
http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/lout/lout.html.


How to install it?
------------------
Simply extract it into any directory of your drive; e.g.,

   cd \progs
   unzip lout312x

and add to your autoexec.bat (or in any *.bat which you shall
lout.exe from) this line:

   set LOUTLIB=<name of directory where lout is expanded into>

e.g., 

   set LOUTLIB=c:\progs\lout\lib

OK, if you wish you can put c:\progs\lout\bin in your PATH, but it is
just up to you (of course, you have to say to DOS, where LOUT is in some
way, but it is up to you).

The lout makefile recommends:

   If the usual size of a piece of paper at your site is not A4, you   
   might like to now change the default value of the @PageType option  
   on line 1520 of file $(LIBDIR)/include/dl.  You can find the list of
   known page types in the User's Guide, and also at line 2679 in file 
   $(LIBDIR)/include/dl.

			Great LOUTing!

					Matthew Cepl
					cepl@bigfoot.com


Compilation notes
-----------------
lout-3.12 was compiled with djgpp (http://www.delorie.com) and with the
Mingw32 tools (http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/).

The DOS executables will run on a 386-or-better.  Under Win9x, they
understand long filenames.  The Win32 executables will run on Win9x/NT.

Partial file listing:

   lout/
     README.1st      this file
     README          main README from the lout sources
     blurb           introduction to lout from the main sources
     gnu.gpl         GNU Public License
     makefile        used to compile the executables
     patches         PDF fixes from Valeriy E. Ushakov
   lout/bin/
     c2lout.exe      DOS
     c2lout-m32.exe  Win32
     lout.exe        DOS
     lout-m32.exe    Win32

To reduce the size of the archive, the extensive documentation appears
only in the companion source archive lout312s.zip (in the doc/ directory).
The lout homepage mentioned above is nicely done; in particular, it
includes a pointer to Murray Adelman's article on lout, appearing in the
Linux Gazette http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/adelman.html.

Note that the sources must have the usual DOS end-of-line ("\r\n")
before installing lout.  If the source archive is in zip form, then
"unzip -a" is recommended for unpacking.  Installing with Unix-style
end-of-line ("\n") will succeed, but lout will be broken (for example,
on the user doc).

Thanks to Matthew Cepl for testing, and to Valeriy E. Ushakov for
providing the PDF fixes for 3.12 and some important debugging help.

--
Darrel Hankerson hankedr@mail.auburn.edu
29 October 1998
