VisualOberon ------------ This is a version of VisualOberon (VO). The purpose of this text is to give a short introduction to VO and the purpose of this release. Also included is a description of what the various files in this archive are and how the can be grouped into parts with different functionalliy. Also you can find information how to compile/install VisualOberon in this file. Fore even more informationen look at the homepage of the VisualOberon project: http://visualoberon.sourceforge.net Why this release? ----------------- A more in detail desription of the purpose of this release can be found in the file ABOUT in the same directory. What do you need to use VO? --------------------------- You need to install a number of programms/packages before you can compile and use VisualOberon. Please look at the VisualOberon homepage for information about this packages, how to get and how to install them. VO was implemented using Linux for x86 (Currently current Debian version) under KDE 3.1. However different versions of VisualOberon have been successfully compiled under various unix-plattforms which support X11. So no problems should occure. How to compile and install? --------------------------- Copy the complete archive anywhere you like and where you can compile it using oo2c. Call the configure script located in the main directory of the archive. Call "configure --help" to see what options you can set. The configure script the will find out what software you have installed and where it is placed. It exspecially looks for imlib and the various libraries supported by imlib. Imlib is a library supporting the loading of various graphics formats. At the end fo the analysis of your system the configure script will generate a makefile. To then compile VisualOberon just type "make". The makefile will then automatically compile a static or dynamic library (depended of your system features). After that you can type "make install" which will install the created library within the oo2c directry tree. Note, that you may need special rights on your system to install VisualOberon. You may have to be superuser. After that VisualOberon has been installed and you can then start hacking away. For first test, go to the "demos" subdirectory. The demos should have been already compiled by the make in the main directory. After that you can run the demos and watch. A short description of the demos can be found in the info documentation, too. Please read the README in the demos subdirectory for more information. There is also a tools directory that contains tools that ease the work with VisualOberon. Contact ------- If you have questions, problems with installation you can contact the developers via the VisualOberon mailing list. Please see http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/visualoberon for more information about accessing the mailing list. If in doubt or have problems with the mailinglist write to mailto:tim@teulings.org. Preferences setting ------------------- If you want to change the look and the behaviour of the used objects you can use the VisualPrefs program, which will also be compiled while creating the tools. You can then start the VisualPrefs program, make your changes and save them. This will result in human readable file within the .VisualOberon directory. The used colors and fonts (and some other settings) cannot be changed from within VisualPrefs because VisualOberon does not yet support color and font selectors. You have to edit the "Display"-files in your ".VisualOberon" directory by hand after storing the settings to create them. What is the function of the different modules? ---------------------------------------------- See the supplied texinfo/info/dvi documentation for more information about each module and a general cross reference of the classes and methods supplied by VO. Where to start investigating the source? ---------------------------------------- Starting point for an in-to-deep lecture of the current sources of VO are the three main modules "VO:Object", "VO:Base:Object", "VO: Base:Display" and VO:OS:Display. I have tried to comment them as fully as possible. However, if there are any questions I will give you as much help as possible. For people who want to write their own objects, I've also put a number of comments in "VO:Button", so take a look at it, too. Use the suplied docmentation in the "docs" subdiretcory for a detail description of VisualOberon and its concepts. It also contains automatically generated crossreferences for the sources. I want to help, what can I do? ------------------------------ Read ABOUT in the same directory and the documentation given in various formats. It should answer all your questions. However if there are still unanswered questions, mail me or subscribe to the mailinglist. Copyright? ---------- The VisualOberon library itself is under the GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE if not otherwise stated. Read the file COPYING.LIB for more information. The rest of the package - exspecially the various demo programs - is, if not otherwise stated under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. Read the file COPYING that comes with this package for more information.