
   __ o  o __
   \_\|__|/_/
     \(o  o)      Giraffe Library
      |\ _|
      |\`-'       Version 1.0a8
      |/|
      |\|         Standard ML bindings for GObject-based libraries
      |/|         http://www.giraffelibrary.org/
      |\|


This README file covers the following topics:

  1. Overview
  2. System Requirements
  3. Installation
  4. Contact and support


Full documentation is available in the User Guide at

  http://www.giraffelibrary.org/doc/


         ---------------          1.  Overview          ---------------

Giraffe Library is a Standard ML library that provides an interface to various
GObject-based libraries, such as GTK+.  The interface introduces some
abstraction of the libraries to provide expected features of Standard ML such
as:

  - automatic memory management (garbage collection)
  - type-safety
  - no uninitialized values
  - portable source code

For the most part, Giraffe Library is generated automatically from the GIR data
of the libraries.  At present, interfaces to parts of the following libraries
(and their dependencies) are available:

  - GTK+
  - Pango
  - GtkSourceView
  - VTE (Virtual Terminal Emulator)


         ---------------    2.  System Requirements     ---------------

Giraffe Library has been tested on various combinations of
  - Fedora and Ubuntu GNU/Linux and Mac OS X systems
  - i686 and x86_64 platforms
In principle, any system that satisfies the following requirements should work.

At least one of the following Standard ML compilers is required:

  MLton    >= 20130715
  Poly/ML  >= 5.6

The following libraries are supported, where the interface is based on the
indicated version:

  GLib-2.0              2.50.3
  GObject-2.0           2.50.3
  Gio-2.0               2.50.3
  GModule-2.0           2.50.3
  GIRepository-2.0      1.50.0
  Atk-1.0               2.22.0
  Pango-1.0             1.40.9
  PangoCairo-1.0        1.40.9
  GdkPixbuf-2.0         2.36.9
  Gdk-3.0               3.22.17
  Gtk-3.0               3.22.17
  GtkSource-3.0         3.22.2
  Vte-2.90              0.36.5
  Vte-2.91              0.46.3

Later versions are expected to work but newer features are not supported.
Earlier versions may still work, depending on the actual dependencies.

Other standard tools are required:
  - An ANSI C compiler, such as GCC.
  - Common GNU utilities, such as Bash, Make, Grep and Sed.
  - The pkg-config utility.


         ---------------        3.  Installation        ---------------

See the file 'INSTALL'.


         ---------------    4.  Contact and support     ---------------

Please send any queries to the Giraffe User mailing list:

  http://giraffelibrary.org/mailman/listinfo/giraffe-user_giraffelibrary.org
