
                                TOAD 0.42.22
                     the "In and Out of My Mind" release

                 Copyright (C) 1996-2000 by Mark-Andr Hopf
                           eMail: mhopf@mark13.de
                    
                             February, 24nd 2000


1. SMALLPRINT

  The TOAD library is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General
  Public License (LGPL) See the file COPYING.LIB for more details.

  Some programs coming with TOAD might be under the terms of the
  GNU General Public License (GPL). See the file COPYING for more details.

  TOAD comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


2. WHAT IS TOAD?

   TOAD is a set of C++ classes for developing X Window applications. Since
  there are so many other GUI libraries around (the living ones: GTK+, Qt,
  LessTif, Motif, fltk, Xclasses, notif, OpenLook, wxWindows and the dead
  ones: SUIT, Andrew Toolkit, InterViews, Fresco, XForms, ET++, Common
  Point) you may ask yourself why one should use TOAD? I'm prejudiced so I
  won't tell you.  But have a look at it and find out yourself.


3. A WORD OF WARNING

   Current releases are named 0.x.y indicating that TOAD is still under
  construction and a lot of things may change from one release to another.
  Furthermore there's not a lot of documentation available.

   So when you just want to get some work done you should turn to another
  toolkit like GTK+ (http://www.gtk.org/) which are stable and widely used.


4. REQUIREMENTS

  - Linux compatible operating system
  - GNU C++ Compiler 2.9.5 or later
  - GNU Binutils 2.9.1 or later
  - GNU C library 2.1 or later
  - X Window System, Version 11, Release 6 or later
  - zlib 1.1.1
  - libpng 1.0.1

  TOAD has been tested on the following platforms:
  - Linux 2.2.14 SMP (i686)
  - AIX (as of 0.42.19 and 0.42.20)
  and will probably run on any other Linux, Hurd or FreeBSD compatible 
  system.


5. INSTALLING TOAD

   Run `build', type [1] and [2], follow the instructions and you're done.


6. DOCUMENTATION AND HELP

  - Have a look at `doc/manual'

  - When you have PERL and a WebBrowser installed, move to the
    `doc/reference' directory, run make and view the "index.html" file.

  - There's a WWW site regarding TOAD:
  
                         http://www.mark13.de/toad/

    and a mailing list.

    To subscribe send an empty eMail to
    
                        toadlib-subscribe@onelist.com

    and send a reply to confirm that you really want to join the list.
    You may the send messages to

                             toadlib@onelist.com

    To unsubscribe from the list send an empty eMail to

                       toadlib-unsubscribe@onelist.com


7. FEATURES

  - Callbacks to member functions
  - Dithering (for 16 and 256 color displays) to avoid the horrible
    switching of colormaps
  - push buttons, radio buttons, fat radio buttons, check boxes, scrollbars, 
    list boxes, combo boxes, menubar, text fields, dialog windows, form layout
    manager, mdi window, io & timer classes, fonts, cursors, colors, etc.
  - Integrated dialog editor
  - Filter interface for bitmap files
    (available filters: BMP, GIF, PNG, JPG; the filters will be moved to 
    shared libraries in the future, so more filters can be added without 
    compiling TOAD again)
  - Drag&Drop (under construction)
  - Multiple Document Interface (TMDIWindow) for the ones who need it
  - OpenGL and Mesa 2.0 support is available (see examples/opengl)
  - HTML Viewer (under construction)


8. DEBUGING

  Hints for the FSF's GNU Development Tools:

  tips to trace exceptions or fatal errors
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  - set breakpoint at `exit'
  - set breakpoint at `__throw' to find the source of C++ errors

  tips to trace memory bugs with glibc and toad
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  - enable `DEFINES = -DDEBUG_MEMORY' in src/Makefile before compiling
    the library

  - link program with `-lmcheck' or set the environment variable 
    `MALLOC_CHECK_' to
      0: any detected heap corruption is silently ignored
      1: a diagnostic is printed on `stderr'
      2: `abort' is called immediately

  - set the environment variable `MALLOC_TRACE' to the name of a logfile; 
    get a report afterwards with `mtrace <program> <logfile>'.


9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  TOAD wouldn't have been possible without all the people who have
  contributed to
  - GNU/Linux (special thanx to Linus Torvalds)
  - GCC (special thanx to Richard M. Stallman, the Free Software Foundation 
    and Cygnus Solutions)
  - XFree86 (see http://www.xfree86.org/)
  - Joe's Own Editor
  and all the other programs and data I love and use but don't have the
  time to list here.

  Special greetings to:

  Mom & Dad, Gita, Martin, Tim, Melanie, Gordon, Tilo, Juli, Gerd, Jens,
  Michael and the jumping pumping machine brain...
