To: mozilla-general@mozilla.org, mozilla-documentation@mozilla.org
From: Pat Gunn <pgunn01@ibm.net>
Subject: Mozilla Newsletter
Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 05:24:52 -0400

Mozilla Newsletter
This is a highly informal document describing, for people
who haven't been around for a long time on the Mozilla newsgroups,
what's been going on. It's highly experimental, and future versions
depend on interest levels and feedback. If you think you can do a
better job at this, mail me (so I'll know someone else is doing it)
and go for it! If you think it's a good/bad idea, respond via mail
or news.

Welcome to the Mozilla newsletter. The idea of this newsletter is to
describe happenings that are of interest to the Mozilla developer
and/or Mozilla users. Future versions (if any) will describe
what happened between versions of the newsletter, and might end
up being weekly. For this issue, general topics and goings-on in
the Mozilla community will be described.

Within the last month, the public has gotten their first go
at the Mozilla source, and the infrastructure to develop the
source has matured. Groups have formed and matured to port to
many different operating systems. Within the last few
days, the third monolithic release of the source became available,
and the CVS servers went up, providing a means for Mozilla developers
to stay very up-to-date with the current state of the source.
As of current, there are still major performance problems with
the CVS system, but this should be fixed shortly with new hardware.

The source itself still is comprised almost completely of
code from Netscape people, and the changes since the
first tarball are not vast. Currently, there are several
problems with people whose systems don't match exactly the
system-specific makefiles, often requiring editing of these
files for different Unixes. Hopefully, autoconf or some other
auto-configurator will eventually be used for all of these,
making these problems vanish.

The use of other toolkits (other than Motif) with
Unix Mozilla is still highly primitive, with Qt being
the only relatively stable non-Motif toolkit that works.
Lesstif is still not really a viable replacement for Motif
in this regard, but strong interest from the Mozilla community
is spurring lots of development in the Lesstif crowd to fix the
problems.

The reaction of the media to the Mozilla source is mainly
positive, with a few negative voices here and there. The
negative voices mainly complain that an open Mozilla
will result in more than two targets (Moz/IE) to develop for,
while the positive voices trumpet the fixing of bugs, more
flexable customization by businesses of Mozilla, and
the horde of new features that are to result.

The sections of Mozilla that have been removed are (largely)
still gone, with crypto added back in (within the first few
*HOURS* of the *first* release) by the SSLeay team. Mail and
News arn't yet back, and the ability to use a given JVM is
still under construction.

Mozilla shows many interesting features that show the development
put into it since Communicator 4.x. A small, but highly valuable,
feature is the ability to tear off the bookmarks menu.
Aurora is a new component that allows you to store links to
applications and documents within your browser. Unfortunately,
it's stability is currently quite poor. Raptor is a new rendering
engine that's not yet integrated into Mozilla (or crossplatform).
It's available as a separate source distrib that currently only
builds under windows (ports, anyone?) but looks like it wouldn't
be too difficult to port to other platforms.

Status of each OS on Mozilla:
Windows: Everything since the second tarball should build fine
	on Win95 or WinNT, using MS VC++. Ports to other compilers
	are underway, and eventually it has been determined to be
	desirable that dependance on MFC be eliminated. This is a
	long-term goal.
MacOS: Should build fine on CodeWarriorPro. I haven't heard anything
	at all about people trying to compile it with other compilers.
Unix: Builds fine with versions of GCC inclusively between 2.7.2 and
	2.8. Requires Motif to make anything stable currently.
BeOS: Not sure where they are currently
OS/2: Most of NSPR builds without problems. After NSPR is ironed out,
	the Unix BE and the X FE will be used for an initial port to
	iron out bugs in the BE, and at that point a PM FE will be
	the big project.
	There are actually 2 teams due to a disagreement (with a bit
	of hostility) and lack of communication between certain
	groups that assembled at different times.
Rhapsody: Not sure where they are currently. Most of the BE compiles.
DOS: Currently in the early planning stage
PalmOS: Still in planning stage
wince: Being discussed
Java: Not sure where they are currently. They intend to wrap all of
	Mozilla in Java, using JNI for everything, and once it
	builds, start nativizing, piece-by-piece, the native code.
---------

This was no doubt rather dull reading for those of us who have
been here since the release, but it probably isn't quite so
dull for newcomers. Again, I don't feel a particular attachment
to this newsletter, but I think it would be a useful thing
to have out there. If you think it's a bad idea, good idea,
or want to take it over, please mail me or respond via news.
I'm not afraid of criticism, so if it's really bad, or a bad
idea, tell me.

(It would've been longer, and divided into sections, etc, but
I'm tired)

-- 
---------------------------------------------------
Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce
comoderator:comp.os.os2.moderated
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -- Dr Who
http://junior.apk.net/~qc
------------------------------------------------