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Notes:

Release Name: pre-alpha-0.16

Notes:
Version
-------

This version ($Name: PRE_ALPHA_0_16 $) is functionally almost identical with the
previous pre-alpha-0.15.  A common base class LongDecimalBase for
LongDecimal and LongDecimalQuot has been added and some methods which
happen to be identical have been moved to this class.  Some tests have
been added, but no bugs have been detected.  Some comments have been
provided or improved.

It could be observed that gem-installation, as described below, fails
on Windows 2000 with ruby 1.8.2, but works on Linux with ruby 1.8.4
Any help from someone who knows more about Ruby on Windows would be
apreciated.  For the time being long-decimal has to be considered
platform specific for Linux/Unix.

Beyond this restriction there are no known bugs and this version can
be considered complete in terms of functionality.  This version is
still a pre-alpha-version, but it is expected to move it to alpha
within the next weeks, after having added some more tests and having
fixed potential bugs that these tests might reveal.  I do not expect
the first alpha version to be much different from this version.

Install
-------

(REMARK: installation has only been successfully tested on Linux with
ruby 1.8.4 and has been observed to fail on Windows 2000)

1. Using ruby-gems (preferred)
- download the newest gem-file from long-decimal project at rubyforge
  which can be found by 
  http://rubyforge.org/projects/long-decimal/ -> Files
  ( http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1334 )
- open a shell window
  cd to the directory where you have downloaded the gem-file
  (on some systems you need to become root before installing:)
  su
  gem install long-decimal
  [remark: currently rubyforge does not publish long-decimal directly
           as gem, so you can't use gem to download, but you have to
           download the gem-file manually first and then use gem only
           to install it] 

- Usage from your ruby-programs:
  require "rubygems"
  require_gem "long-decimal"

- documentation will be found in HTML-format in the directory
  $RUBY_DIR/gems/$RUBY_VERSION/doc/long-decimal-$LONG_DECIMAL_VERSION/rdoc/index.html
  where $RUBY_DIR is the directory containing your ruby-installation,
                  usually /usr/lib/ruby or /usr/local/lib/ruby on
                  Linux/Unix-systems. 
        $RUBY_VERSION is the major version of your Ruby, like 1.8
        $LONG_DECIMAL_VERSION is the version of long-decimal that you
                              have installed, like 0.00.15
  on my machine that would be
  /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/doc/long-decimal-0.00.15/rdoc/index.html

2. Installing from the sources (it is preferred to use the gem-installation)
- download the newest source-tar.gz-file from long-decimal project at rubyforge
  which can be found by 
  http://rubyforge.org/projects/long-decimal/ -> Files
  ( http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1334 )
- open a shell window
  cd to the directory where you have downloaded the gem-file
  unpack the file using tar
  tar xfzvv long-decimal-pre-alpha-0_13.tar.gz
  cd long-decimal
- now you can use rake for several operations
  - rake test
      runs runit tests.  All tests should succeed.
  - rake doc
      creates the documentation
  - rake gem creates the gem-file in a sub-directory pkg
      recommended for installation, proceed as in 1
  - rake install installs directly into the site-ruby-directory.
      it is preferred to use
      rake gem
      cd pkg
      gem install long-decimal

3. The documentation can be created from the sources.  It is contained
in the gem-file.  But it can also be downloaded separately as
tar.gz-file.

License
-------

Ruby's license or LGPL
Find copies of these licenses on http://www.gnu.org/ or http://www.ruby-lang.org/

Warranty
--------

This is a pre-alpha-version.  Do not expect too much!  This is work in progress!
I do not take any responsibility.  Please use it as it is, change it
according to the terms of the license or wait for a more stable
version (for wich I can't take any warranty either...)

Author
------

Karl Brodowsky
http://www.velofahren.de/cgi-bin/mailform.cgi
(no direct mail address because I do not like spam)



Changes: created common base class LongDecimalBase for LongDecimal and LongDecimalQuot added some tests added some comments