NIHCL stands for 'national-institute-of-health's-class-library'. it can be acquired via anonymous ftp from [128.231.128.251] in the file pub/nihcl-3.0.tar.Z
NIHCL (some people pronounce it 'N-I-H-C-L', others pronounce it like 'nickel') is a C++ translation of the Smalltalk class library. There are some ways where NIHCL's use of weak typing helps (ex: persistent objects). There are also places where the weak typing it introduces create tension with the underlying statically typed language.
A draft version of the 250pp reference manual is included with version 3.10 (gnu emacs TeX-info format). It is not available via uucp, or via regular mail on tape, disk, paper, etc (at least not from Keith Gorlen).
