libs-base/BULLETIN

* Gnustep Base Library

The Gnustep Base Library (libobjects) is a library of
general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects written by
Andrew Kachites McCallum and designed in the Smalltalk tradition.  It
includes collection objects for maintaining groups of objects and C
types, byte streams for I/O to various destinations, coders for
formating objects and C types to byte streams, ports for network
packet transmission, remote object messaging support, pseudo-random
number generators, and time handling facilities.


* Gnustep Base Library

The Gnustep Base Library (libobjects) is a library of
general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects designed in the
Smalltalk tradition.  It includes collection objects for maintaining
groups of objects and C types, byte streams for I/O to various
destinations, coders for formating objects and C types to byte
streams, ports for network packet transmission, remote object
messaging support, pseudo-random number generators, and time handling
facilities.  It is being written by Andrew Kachites McCallum.


* Gnustep Base Library (libobjects)

Andrew Kachites McCallum is writing the Gnustep Base Library, a
library of general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects designed
in the Smalltalk tradition.  It includes collection objects for
maintaining groups of objects and C types, byte streams for I/O to
various destinations, coders for formating objects and C types to byte
streams, ports for network packet transmission, remote object
messaging support, pseudo-random number generators, and time handling
facilities.  It is being written by Andrew Kachites McCallum.


* Gnustep Base Library

The Gnustep Base Library (@code{libobjects}) is a library of
general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects written by
Andrew Kachites McCallum.  It includes collection objects for maintaining
groups of objects and C types, streams for I/O to various
destinations, coders for formating objects and C types to streams,
ports for network packet transmission, distributed objects (remote
object messaging), pseudo-random number generators, and time handling
facilities.  Contact @samp{mccallum@gnu.ai.mit.edu}.



* Gnustep Base Library

The Gnustep Base Library (libobjects) is a library of
general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects written by
Andrew Kachites McCallum.  What `libg++' is to GNU's C++, `libobjects' is to
GNU's Objective C.

The library features collection objects for maintaining groups of
objects and C types, byte streams for I/O to various destinations,
coders for formating objects and C types to byte streams, ports for
network packet transmission, remote object messaging support,
pseudo-random number generators, and time handling facilities.

The heirarchy of collection objects are similar in spirit to
Smalltalk's collections.  A deep inheritance heirarchy provides good
uniformity of access to members across different collection classes.
All collections can hold simple C types such as int's and floats, as
well as Objects.  The collection classes include simple collections
(Set, Bag), collections with contents accessible by unordered keys
(Dictionary, MappedCollector), collections with ordered contents
(Array, LinkedList, BinaryTree, RBTree, SplayTree).  There is also a
DelegatePool object that can forward messages it receives to an
arbitrary number of Delegates.

Stream objects provide a consistent interface for reading and writing
bytes.  `StdioStream' objects work with files, file descriptors, FILE
pointers and pipes to/from executables.  `MemoryStream' objects work
with memory buffers.  There are methods for writing arbitrary n-length
buffers, newline-terminated lines, and printf-style formated strings.

Coders provide a formatted way of writing to Streams.  After a coder
is initialized with a stream, the coder can encode/decode Objective C
objects and C types in an architecture-independent way.  The currently
available concrete coder classes are `BinaryCoder', for reading and
writing a compact stream of illegible bytes, and `TextCoder', for
reading and writing human-readable text (which you can also process
with `perl', `awk', or whatever scripting language you like).

Coders and streams can be mixed and matched so that programmers can
choose the destination and the format separately.




The current version is 0.1, the low number indicating that the library
is still in flux.  Future version will include String objects and
before allocation/dealocation conventions.  



see ~rms/gnuorg/status




Here is the simple description:

* Gnustep Base Library

The Gnustep Base Library (@code{libobjects}) is a library of
general-purpose, non-graphical Objective C objects written by
Andrew Kachites McCallum.  It includes collection objects for maintaining
groups of objects and C types, streams for I/O to various
destinations, coders for formating objects and C types to streams,
ports for network packet transmission, distributed objects (remote
object messaging), pseudo-random number generators, and time handling
facilities.  It is known to work on i386, m68k, SPARC, MIPS, and
RS6000.  Contact the author at @samp{mccallum@gnu.ai.mit.edu}.


(GNU's Flashes)

* New Library (on the Languages Tape?)

The Gnustep Base Library (@code{libobjects}) has been added.
See ``GNU Software'' and ``Forthcoming GNUs'' for more information.


(Forthcoming GNUs)

* Gnustep Base Library

Future versions will have String objects that are integrated into the
Collection object hierarchy, a better allocation/deallocation
mechanism, improved features for distributed objects (including a
back-end that uses Mach ports instead of sockets), more extensive
random number generator facilities, and ports to more machines.
Volunteers are needed for additional projects; contact
@code{mccallum@gnu.ai.mit.edu}.