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                           I N T E R C H A N G E

Interchange 4.7.2

Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Red Hat, Inc. <info@akopia.com>

Originally based on Vend 0.2, with portions from Vend 0.3
Copyright 1995-96 by Andrew M. Wilcox

See the file LICENSE for redistribution terms.

This program is offered without warranty of any kind. We are interested
in problems, suggestions, or comments, but do not offer free individual
support in most cases. Our professional services group offers paid
consulting services, which are detailed at:

http://www.redhat.com/ecommerce

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Interchange is a full-featured electronic catalog system with
online ordering; real-time credit card processing hooks; high-end
database access and retrieval with SQL support; product categorizing,
merchandising, and discounting; basic customer relationship management;
dynamic content presentation; content management; internationalization
and localization support; real-time tax and shipping hooks; reporting;
and web-based administration.

Interchange absolutely REQUIRES Perl 5.005 or Perl 5.6 or later on a
Unix-like operating system.

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More information is in the following files and directories:

doc/           Documentation.

README.rpm     Notes on using Interchange when installed from RPM packages.

README.debian  Notes on using Interchange when installed from Debian packages.

README.cvs     How to access the CVS repository to track ongoing development.

WHATSNEW       Changes per version for this version family.

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Major files/directories in the distribution:

Makefile.PL    Script to create a Makefile, used for installation.

dist/          The distribution files, exclusive of executable
               files and modules. Includes:

               interchange.cfg.dist   Distribution interchange.cfg
               foundation/            Demo catalog application
               src/                   C and Perl code for CGI links
               lib/                   Back-end administrative interface
               usertag/               Some fairly standard usertags

extra/         Some not-always-needed Perl libraries.

hints.pl       OS-specific configuration settings. None currently used.

lib/           The library modules needed to run Interchange.

scripts/       The executable files, relocated to bin/ in the install
               directory.

test.pl        The installation test script.

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                          I N S T A L L A T I O N

Here is the quick installation summary:

gzip -dc interchange-4.7.?.tar.gz | tar xvf -
cd interchange-4.7.?
./configure

Then you will need to make your first Interchange catalog. See the
section 'DEMO' below.

Remember to check http://developer.akopia.com/ for documentation and
help from other users if you have any trouble.

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                                 D E M O

There is a demo catalog included called 'foundation'.

To install the demo, go to the directory where you installed Interchange
(default is "interchange" in your home directory, /usr/local/interchange
for root installations, or /usr/lib/interchange for RPM installations)
and run:

bin/makecat

Follow the prompts and after restarting the Interchange server you
should be able to access the demo catalog.

Please note that some functionality (notably the reporting features)
may not be available if you are not using an SQL database such as
MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Visit http://demo.akopia.com/ to see a live demo on our servers.

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                         D O C U M E N T A T I O N

The included documentation is in man(1), POD, and HTML formats. Extended
documentation is available at:

http://developer.akopia.com/

which includes user-annotated documentation, the manual in other formats,
and a user-contributed code library.

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                         C O M P A T I B I L I T Y

Interchange is regularly tested on Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. It
has also been used on OpenBSD, Digital UNIX/Tru64, SCO, AIX, and other
Unix variants. It should work on any Unix with Perl 5.005 or higher and
the necessary Perl modules.

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