About the Vesta SDL Programmer's Reference

I first began working on this document in 1999. It started as a way to help other people in the Alpha Development Group (where I worked) get up to speed on writing build descriptions in Vesta SDL. I extended it on an as-needed and as-time-allowed basis.

Fast-forward 2.5 years: Vesta is released as free software! Truly an historic moment (well, at least for Vesta), but not one I was thinking about when I started writing this guide. Consequently, you may find any or all of the following in it:

• Information specific to Tru64 UNIX (the only platform Vesta supported when I began writing this guide).
• Out of date information (e.g. statements that primitive functions return the deprecated ERR value when they really cause a run-time error that stops the evaluation). (When in doubt, refer to the language specification.)
• Spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and inconsistent typographical conventions.

I'm doing my best to bring everything in the guide up to date and clean it up, but it is inevitably a work in progress (as are all things on the web). Please bear with me in this [exciting!] time of transition for Vesta. Of course corrections and suggestions for improvement are always welcome.