                              XMill 0.8beta

                            AT&T Corporation

Overview
--------

  XMill is a special-purpose compressor for XML data that typically achieves
  twice the compression rate over existing compressors, such as gzip.
  XMill typically compresses the XML representation of some data source
  better than conventional compression on the original data source!

  XMill is BETA release software. It is to be used at your own risk.
  Any valuable feedback and bug reports are highly appreciated and should
  be sent to Hartmut Liefke, liefke@seas.upenn.edu or Hedzer Westra,
  hhwestra@cs.uu.nl.

Credits
-------

  XMill 0.7:
   Dan Suciu, AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, suciu@research.att.com
   Hartmut Liefke, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, liefke@seas.upenn.edu
  
  XMill 0.8:
   Hedzer Westra, Adlib Information Systems, The Netherlands, hhwestra@cs.uu.nl

  zlib:
   dunno, see the zlib sources
   
  bzlib:
   dunno, see the bzlib sources
   
  arithmetic coding:
   Alistair Moffat
   
  ppmd+ (based on arithmetic coding):
   Bill Teahan

  PPMDI (based om ppmd+):
   Dmitri Shkarin
  
  multi-model PPMDI (based on PPMDI):
   James Cheney
    
  The multi-model PPMDI by James Cheney is included in XMill 0.8
    
Content
-------

  The full XMill distribution contains the following directories and files:

   ./documentation:
    ./COPYRIGHT.txt  - the copyright notice
    ./INSTALL.txt    - the installation manual
    ./LICENSE.txt    - the license agreement
    ./MANUAL.txt     - the user manual
    ./MINTERMS.txt   - the minimum terms agreement for redistributions of XMill
    ./README.txt     - this file
    ./paper.ps.gz    - a technical report describing the internals of XMill.
    ./xmill-08-doc.txt
    		     - documentation added by Hedzer Westra
    		     
   ./unix/           - contains the UNIX (in the distribution: Linux) executables
   ./win32/          - contains the Windows 98/NT executables
   ./examples/       - contains several small XML example and '.xmill' files
                       with data specific container path and user compressors

   ./XMill/          - the source files of XMill
   ./xmilltest/      - the source files of the XMill unit tester
   ./xmillinspect/   - the source files of the XMI file inspector / integrity checker
   ./xcmill	     - metadata for the compressor
   ./xdemill	     - metadata for the decompressor
   ./bzlib/          - contains the source files for bzlib (and bzip)
   ./zlib/           - contains the source files for zlib (and minigzip)   
   ./ppmdi/          - contains the source files for mulit-model PPMDI
   ./makefile        - the make file for generating the binaries under UNIX
   ./tmp/            - contains the object files of the Unix compilation
   ./*.vcproj        - the project files for Visual Studio .Net 2002
   ./xmill.sln       - the solution file for Visual Studio .Net 2002
   ./v0.7-binaries   - 'old' binaries

The partial distributions for Linux and Windows NT only contain the
executables ('./unix' or './win32') and the examples ('./examples').


Documentation
-------------

  For detailed installation instructions, see the file INSTALL.txt and for
  a description of parameters of XMill, see the manual file MANUAL.txt.
  For technical documentation anf v0.8 extensions, see file xmill-08-doc.txt.
  
Licensing
---------

  XMill is essentially free software.  Please read LICENSE.txt
  carefully: if you do not agree with the terms of the release, do not
  download or use this software.

  The license allows you to modify XMill and distribute the new
  software, but you must agree to certain terms.  Among others your
  license agreement must satisfy certain conditions.  To simplify this
  procedure for you, the distribution package includes MINTERMS.txt, a
  default license agreement you may use for distributing the modified
  software.


Contact Information
-------------------

  If you have questions about or problems with XMill, please contact
  
  Hartmut Liefke, http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~liefke,
  Email: liefke@seas.upenn.edu.
  
  or:
  
  Hedzer Westra, http://njutov.dyndns.org/~pretzel,
  Email: hhwestra@cs.uu.nl.
