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+\chapter{Preface} #%{{{
+
+  \slang is an interpreted language that was designed from the start
+  to be easily embedded into a program to provide it with a powerful
+  extension language.  Examples of programs that use \slang as an
+  extension language include the \jed text editor, the \slrn
+  newsreader, and \sldxe (unreleased), a numerical computation
+  program.  For this reason, \slang does not exist as a separate
+  application and many of the examples in this document are presented
+  in the context of one of the above applications.
+
+  \slang is also a programmer's library that permits a programmer to
+  develop sophisticated platform-independent software.  In addition to
+  providing the \slang extension language, the library provides
+  facilities for screen management, keymaps, low-level terminal I/O,
+  etc.  However, this document is concerned only with the extension
+  language and does not address these other features of the \slang
+  library.  For information about the other components of the library,
+  the reader is referred to the \slang-library-reference.
+
+\sect{A Brief History of \slang} #%{{{
+
+  I first began working on \slang sometime during the fall of 1992.
+  At that time I was writing a text editor (\jed), which I wanted to
+  endow with a macro language.  It occured to me that an
+  application-independent language that could be embedded into the
+  editor would prove more useful because I could envision embedding it
+  into other programs.  As a result, \slang was born.  
+  
+  \slang was originally a stack language that supported a
+  postscript-like syntax.  For that reason, I named it \slang, where
+  the \em{S} was supposed to emphasize its stack-based nature.  About
+  a year later, I began to work on a preparser that would allow one to
+  write using a more traditional infix syntax making it easier to use
+  for those unfamiliar with stack based languages.  Currently, the
+  syntax of the language resembles C, nevertheless some
+  postscript-like features still remain, e.g., the `\var{%}' character
+  is still used as a comment delimiter.
+
+#%}}}
+
+\sect{Acknowledgements} #%{{{
+
+   Since I first released \slang, I have received a lot feedback about
+   the library and the language from many people.  This has given me
+   the opportunity and pleasure to interact with several people to
+   make the library portable and easy to use.  In particular, I would
+   like to thank the following individuals:
+
+     Luchesar Ionkov \tt{<lionkov@sf.cit.bg>} for his comments and
+     criticisms of the syntax of the language.  He was the person who
+     made me realize that the low-level byte-code engine should be
+     totally type-independent.  He also improved the tokenizer and
+     preparser and impressed upon me that the language needed a
+     grammar.
+
+     Mark Olesen \tt{<olesen@weber.me.queensu.ca>} for his many patches to
+     various aspects of the library and his support on AIX. He also
+     contributed a lot to the pre-processing (\var{SLprep}) routines.
+
+     John Burnell \tt{<j.burnell@irl.cri.nz>} for the OS/2 port of the
+     video and keyboard routines.  He also made value suggestions
+     regarding the interpreter interface.
+
+     Darrel Hankerson \tt{<hankedr@mail.auburn.edu>} for cleaning up and
+     unifying some of the code and the makefiles.
+
+     Dominik Wujastyk \tt{<ucgadkw@ucl.ac.uk>} who was always willing to test
+     new releases of the library.
+
+     Michael Elkins \tt{<me@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu>} for his work on the curses
+     emulation.
+
+     Ulli Horlacher \tt{<framstag@belwue.de>} and Oezguer Kesim
+     \tt{<kesim@math.fu-berlin.de>} for the \slang newsgroup and mailing list.
+     
+     Hunter Goatley, Andy Harper \tt{<Andy.Harper@kcl.ac.uk>}, and Martin
+     P.J. Zinser \tt{<zinser@decus.decus.de>} for their VMS support.
+     
+     Dave Sims \tt{<sims@usa.acsys.com>} and Chin Huang
+     \tt{<cthuang@vex.net>} for Windows 95 and Windows NT support.
+     
+     Lloyd Zusman \tt{<ljz@asfast.com>} and Rich Roth \tt{<rich@on-the-net.com>}
+     for creating and maintaining \tt{www.s-lang.org}.
+
+  I am also grateful to many other people who send in bug-reports and
+  bug-fixes, for without such community involvement, \slang would not
+  be as well-tested and stable as it is.  Finally, I would like to
+  thank my wife for her support and understanding while I spent long
+  weekend hours developing the library.
+
+#%}}}
+
+#%}}}