kawa 1.6.66 released

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

I've released a new kawa snapshot, version 1.6.66.
You can get it from the usual places.
The home page http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/
has been updated.

I will be flying off to Japan in the morning.  Back next Tuesday.
While I will have some email access, expect slower replys.

Changes from Kawa 1.6.64 to 1.6.66
==================================
Added documentation to the manual for Homogeneous numeric vector datatypes
(SRFI-4).

You can now specify characters using their Unicode value:  #\u05d0 is alef.

Kawa now uses a more mnemonic name mangling Scheme.  For example,
a Scheme function named `<=' would get compiled to method `$Ls$Eq'.

There is now working and useful module support, thought not all
features are implemented.  The basic idea is that a module can be any
class that has a default constructor (or all of whose fields and
methods are static);  the public fields and methods of such a
class are its exported definitions.  Compiling a Scheme file
produces such a module.  Doing:
	(require <classname>)
will create an anonymous instance of <classname> (if needed), and add
all its exported definitions to the current environment.  Note that if
you import a class in a module you are compiling, then an instance of
the module will be created at compile-time, and imported definitions
are not re-imported.
(For now you must compile a module, you cannot just load it.)

The define-private keyword creates a module-local definition.

New syntax to override some properties of the current module:
(module-name <NAME>) overrides the default name for a module.
(module-extends <CLASS>) specifies the super-class.
(module-implements <INTERFACE> ...) specfies the implemented interfaces.

The syntax:
	(require 'keyword)
is syntactic sugar for (require <classname>) where the classname
is find is a "module catalog" (currently hard-wired).
This provides compatibility with Slib.  The Slib "features"
gen-write, pretty-print, pprint-file, and printf are now
available in Kawa;  more will be added, depending on time and demand.
See the package directory gnu/kawa/slib for what is available.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/