For those of you not otherwise aware, Parrot 0.1.0 has been released 
on this special leap-year day of February 29th, 2004.  The previous 
release, I believe, was 0.0.13 on October 31st last year.  Parrot is, 
among other things, a multi-language runtime specializing in dynamic 
languages, such as Perl, Python, and Ruby, and is *the* environment 
for Perl 6.  This project has a very big future ahead of it, and is 
even used in a few production environments now.  More info below. -- 
Darren Duncan

The forwarded message:
>Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:45:49 +0100
>From: Leopold Toetsch <lt@toetsch.at>
>To: P6I <perl6-internals@perl.org>
>Cc: P6L <perl6-language@perl.org>, perl6-announce@perl.org,
>         perl5-porters@perl.org
>Subject: Parrot 0.1.0 Released
>
>Parrot 0.1.0 "Leaping Kakapo" Released!
>
>The Parrot team proudly presents the Parrot 0.1.0 leap release. It
>provides some milestones like objects and multi-threading1[1] and
>supports many more platforms.
>
>After some pause you can grab it from
><http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LT/LTOETSCH/parrot-0.1.0.tar.gz> or
>just get the latest and best from CVS by following the directions at
><http://dev.perl.org/cvs/>.
>
>Turn your web browser towards <http://www.parrotcode.org/> for more
>information about Parrot, get involved, and:
>
>Have fun!
>leo
>
>[1] The list of changes includes:
>
>  - "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... objects!"
>  - Huge documentation overhaul
>  - More supported platforms, s. PLATFORMS
>  - Basic thread support for pthread based architectures
>  - Basic event handling for timers and signals including:
>  - PASM callbacks for NCI (native C) functions.
>  - Improved platform configuration
>  - COW stacks now working, stacks code redone
>  - Structure handling vastly improved
>  - Random PMC and rand primitives
>  - Better subroutine call syntax in PIR
>  - Make PIR subroutines compliant with pdd03
>  - Improved profiling (DOD, GC timings)
>  - Hash code improvements, incl. random key order support
>  - Experimental freeze/thaw code for some PMC types
>  - IO improvements for buffered layer and Win32
>  - String iterators
>  - String bitwise vtables
>  - Many new opcodes
>  - Suppport for JIT, where malloced memory isn't executable
>  - Priority DOD scheme for objects that need timely destruction
>  - Improved byte code loading (e.g. onLoad functions)
>  - Language updates: forth, Perl6/P6C, m4
>  - Libraries: Getopt_Long, SDL, Dumper, Sort
>  - new JAPH examples
>  - Unified imcc and parrot test handling
>  - Many new tests (make test reports 1386 tests)
>  - Numerous bug fixes