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.