#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Version 1.04   Date: 2007/09/28
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Added the has_instance() method to return an existing instance without
  creating a new one.

* General cleanup of code, documentation and tests.

* Changed licence from Perl Artistic to the same terms as Perl itself
  (e.g. Artistic 2.0/GPL)

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Version 1.03   Date: 1999/01/19
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Incorporated patches from Andreas Koenig to inline calculation of 
  $instance variable.  This results in a speedup of around 35%.

* Added _new_instance() constructor which is called the first time
  _instance() is called.  This can be overloaded in derived classes 
  to provide more specific object initialisation.

* Updated documentation accordingly.


#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Version 1.02    Date: 1998/04/16
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Fixed minor typos and corrected example in documentation.


#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Version 1.01    Date: 1998/02/10
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Minor documentation changes


#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Version 1.00    Date: 1998/02/10
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Initial revision