Explain purpose of each file (well, most files).

diff --git a/contrib/ChangeLog b/contrib/ChangeLog
index e290ca9..522abbf 100644 (file)
--- a/contrib/ChangeLog
+++ b/contrib/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+2003-06-03  Kai Gro\e,A_\e(Bjohann  <kai.grossjohann@gmx.net>
+
+       * README: Explain purpose of each file (well, most files).
+
 2003-05-01  Vasily Korytov  <deskpot@despammed.com>
 
        * gpg.el (gpg-passphrase-forget): Check that gpg-passphrase is

diff --git a/contrib/README b/contrib/README
index 76d0e5c..7c3c3fc 100644 (file)
--- a/contrib/README
+++ b/contrib/README
@@ -1,3 +1,59 @@
-The files in this directory are not (yet) part of the
-Gnus distribution proper.  They may later become part
-of the distribution, or they may disappear altogether.
+The files in this directory are not (yet) part of the Gnus
+distribution proper.  They may later become part of the distribution,
+or they may disappear altogether.
+
+Please note that it is not good to just add this directory to
+load-path: a number of files in this directory will become part of
+more recent Emacs versions, so that you might be running obsolete
+libraries with all kinds of ill effects.
+
+The suggested method for installation is to copy those files that you
+need to a directory which is in load-path.
+
+Here is an overview of the files:
+
+base64.el
+
+        As of Emacs 21, base64 encoding and decoding is available
+        natively.  So this file appears to be needed for Emacs 20
+        only.
+
+gpg-ring.el
+gpg.el
+
+hashcash.el
+
+md5.el
+
+       MD5 encoding is part of Emacs as of Emacs 21.2.  Hence, this
+       file is not needed for those Emacs versions.
+
+one-line-cookie.diff
+
+ssl.el
+
+ucs-tables.el
+
+       This file provides improved Unicode functionality.  It defines
+       functions unify-8859-on-encoding-mode and
+       unify-8859-on-decoding-mode which unify the Latin-N charsets.
+       Without unify-8859-on-encoding-mode, composing a Latin-9 reply
+       to a Latin-1 posting, say, will produce a multipart posting (a
+       Latin-1 part and a Latin-9 part), or perhaps UTF-8.  With
+       unify-8859-on-encoding-mode, the outgoing posting can be all
+       Latin-1 or all Latin-9 in most cases.
+
+       It is harmless to turn on unify-8859-on-encoding-mode, but
+       unify-8859-on-decoding-mode may unexpectedly change files in
+       certain situations.  (If the file contains different Latin-N
+       charsets which should not be unified.)
+
+       This is part of Emacs 21.3 and later, which also turns on
+       unify-8859-on-encoding-mode by default.
+
+vcard.el
+
+xml.el
+
+       This is used for parsing RSS feeds.  Part of Emacs 21.3 and
+       later.