
The Quest programming language aims to investigate the frontiers 
of polymorphism and subtyping. The Quest system provides 
an interactive top-level from which one can evaluate expressions 
as well as compile and link interfaces and modules.

Read the non-commercial agreement in "COPYRIGHT".

See "doc/notes/Installation.txt " to properly install Quest in
your file system.

The "doc" subdirectory contains the documentation and legal stuff.
The full licence in latex format is in "doc/license/license.tex". 
The manual, in Macintosh format, is "doc/manual/QuestManual.sit.hqx", 
you will need Stuffit and WriteNow(2.0 and up) to print it. 
You may request a hard copy at the address below.
The man pages are in "doc/manpages".

The qm/src subdirectory contains a Modula3 source of the Quest Machine.

A Modula3 recompilation should be sufficient to get the Quest
Machine running on any 32-bit architecture for which there is a 
Modula3 compiler (e.g. DECstation, Sparcstation).

The file "qm/Quest.qm" is the bootstrapped Quest system in the 
form of bytecode. This works for any little-endian architecture
(e.g. DECstation); see  "doc/notes/Endians.txt" to convert it for 
big-endians (e.g. MIPS, Sparcstation).

The file "qm/Quest.qm.p" is a more portable version of the bytecode. From it
one can produce a byte-swapped version of Quest.qm by running 
"ptn/<architecture>/PortableToNative < qm/Quest.qm.p > qm/Quest.qm"
on a big-endian machine.

The sys subdirectory contains the Quest sources ("*.spec", "*.impl",
"*.qst"). Other utility files are also provided. "MakeQuest.sh" 
performs a complete recompilation of the Quest sources and generates 
a new system "NewQuest.qm". "Quest < LinkNewQuest.qst" is part of 
this process, and can be used to just relink the compiled system 
as "NewQuest.qm".

	Luca Cardelli
	DEC SRC, 130 Lytton Ave
	Palo Alto CA 94301, USA
	luca@src.dec.com
