Compress::Zlib

                                  Version 0.4

                                 25th June 1996

             Copyright (c) 1995/6 Paul Marquess. All rights reserved.
         This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
                modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

                                    WARNING
                              THIS IS ALPHA CODE.
                        Please take care when using it.
                          Please report any problems.


DESCRIPTION
-----------

This module provides a Perl interface to part of the info-zip zlib
compression library.  For more details see the pod documentation
embedded in the file Zlib.pm.

PREREQUISITES
-------------

Before you can build Compress::Zlib you need to have the following
thing installed on your system:

    * Perl 5.002 or better. It may work with 5.001m or better.
    * xsubpp 1.922 or better
    * Info-zip zlib 1.0.2 (note that this module is NOT compatable with
      versions of zlib < 1.0).

BUILDING THE MODULE
-------------------

Assuming you have met all the prerequisites, building the module should
be relatively straightforward.

The only things you might have to change for building the module are
the names of the directories where the zlib library, libz, is installed
and the directory where zlib.h and zconf.h are stored. Edit Makefile.PL
and change ZLIB_LIB and ZLIB_INCLUDE if necessary.

The module can now be built using this sequence of commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test

INSTALLATION
------------

    make install

FEEDBACK
--------

I have tested Compress::Zlib on both SunOS 4.1.3 (Sun C compiler) and
Solaris 2.3 (Sun C compiler again). If you are building the module on
another architecture I would appreciate a note to tell me how you got
on. Although I am particularly interested to hear about any problems
you encounter when building the system, I would still like to hear from
you even if you don't.

Things I particularly would like to know

   * The Operating system name and version, e.g. SunOS 4.1.3
   * Architecture, e.g. Solaris
   * C compiler, e.g. gcc
   * Where there any warnings/errors pronted by the C compiler? If so
     please send the exact output if possible.

CHANGES
-------

  0.1 - first alpha release. 2nd October 1995
  0.2 - Fixed a minor allocation problem in Zlib.xs
  0.3 - Added prototype specification.
  0.4 - Upgrade to support zlib 0.99 

	Added dictionary interface.

	Fixed bug in gzreadline - previously it would keep returning
	the same buffer. This bug was reported by Helmut Jarausch

	Removed dependancy to zutil.h and so dropped support for 
	
	    DEF_MEM_LEVEL (use MAX_MEM_LEVEL instead)
	    DEF_WBITS     (use MAX_WBITS instead)


Paul Marquess <pmarquess@bfsec.bt.co.uk>