# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
#  Copyright (C) 2002/2004/2006/2008/2011 Christian Schlegel
#
#        schlegel@hs-ulm.de
#
#        Prof. Dr. Christian Schlegel
#        University of Applied Sciences
#        Prittwitzstr. 10
#        D-89075 Ulm
#        Germany
#
#        Previous affiliation:
#
#        FAW Ulm
#        Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing
#        Helmholtzstr. 16
#        D-89081 Ulm
#        Germany
#
#  This file is part of the "SmartSoft Communication Library".
#  It provides standardized patterns for communication between
#  different components.
#
#  This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
#  License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
#  version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
#  Lesser General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
#  License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
#  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
#
#
#  (partly based on joint work with Robert Wörz)
#
# --------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================================
DESCRIPTION
============================================================================

    This software package contains a CORBA based implementation of the
    SmartSoft communication patterns.


============================================================================
OVERALL DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
============================================================================

    The communication patterns can be found in "src/smartSoftKernel/smartSoft", 
    examples are in "src/smartSoftKernel/smartExampleComponent*".

    smartsoft/src
                    /src/smartSoftKernel
                         "directory of the SmartSoft kernel"
                        /smartSoftKernel/smartSoft
                                         "the SmartSoft kernel"
                        /smartSoftKernel/smartExampleComponent*
                                         "several example components to 
                                          demonstrate the usage of SmartSoft"

                    /src/components
                         "directory of the provided components. Every component
                          is located in its own directory."

                    /src/interfaceClasses
                         "directory of the communication objects. Every
                          communication object is located in its own
                          directory."

                    /src/utility
                         "directory of additional components which do not
                          depend on SmartSoft"

    smartsoft/include
                     "contains links into the src-directory for all 
                      globally needed include files"

    smartsoft/lib
                     "contains all the libraries"

    smartsoft/bin
                     "contains the binaries"
  
    smartsoft/etc
                     "contains parameter files etc."

    smartsoft/doc 
                     "contains all the documentation"




============================================================================
DOCUMENTATION
============================================================================

If you have doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org) installed on your
machine, the installation will create a nice html documentation that
describes the user API and the example components. Its location is
$SMART_ROOT/doc/html/index.html

Currently, documentation can be found in the header files of the
communication patterns. Further documentation can be found in the
example directories. The example components contain user defined
communication objects, examples of proposed file structure and
Makefiles. The examples are ideal points to start when to learn
how to use the communication patterns.

Various manuals are provided with the next release.

The following files contain the documentation of the various
user methods of the communication patterns:

smartSend.hh            send pattern
smartQuery.hh           query pattern
smartPushNewest.hh      push newest pattern
smartPushTimed.hh       push timed pattern
smartEvent.hh           event pattern
smartWiring.hh          wiring pattern
smartState.hh           state management of components
smartErrno.hh           error code definitios
smartTask.hh            thread class for active objects
smartSys.hh             several helper definitions
...