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+The Newick Utilities are a suite of programs for working with Newick-formatted
+phylogenetic trees.
+
+Documentation
+=============
+
+See in [doc/](doc).
+
+Installing
+==========
+
+Binaries
+--------
+
+If you have a binaries distribution (that is, with a name like
+newick-utils-x.y.z-linux-x86-64.tar.gz), you do not have to compile. The
+binaries are in ./src ; they all have names that start with nw_, so you can do 
+
+    $ sudo cp src/nw_* /usr/local/bin	# or wherever you want
+
+You can test the programs by cd'ing to ./tests, and doing the following:
+
+    $ ./test_binaries.sh
+
+
+Source
+------
+
+If you have a source-only distribution, or if you want to build the binaries
+yourself, it's the familiar
+
+    $ autoreconf -fi
+    $ ./configure
+    $ make
+    $ make check	# optional but recommended
+    $ sudo make install
+
+In addition to a C compiler (I use GCC), you need Flex and Bison (possibly
+already on your system); optionally you can use LibXML, GNU Guile, and Lua.
+
+See [the manual](doc/nwutils_tutorial.pdf) for details.