ZooLib Cross-Platform Framework Release Under MIT License

From: Michael D. Crawford (crawford_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-05 02:49:46

The ZooLib cross-platform application framework (version 0.8) was
released tonight
under the MIT license. It allows one to write a single set of C++
sources and
build native executables for Mac OS, Windows, BeOS, and POSIX flavors
with
XWindows (such as Linux).  

ZooLib's development project page is
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoolib/ 
and its web page is http://zoolib.sourceforge.net  

ZooLib's license may be found at
http://zoolib.sourceforge.net/doc/license.html

One developer's opinion of why ZooLib is good for the community at large
is found at http://zoolib.sourceforge.net/doc/why.html - including
relevant quotes from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the Microsoft
Antitrust Cast on why Microsoft felt 
it was so important to put a stop to the widespread use of
cross-platform API's.

ZooLib application are multithreaded; it provides a GUI toolkit with a
uniquely flexible layout system.  There is a single-file database format
(which may serve as end-user documents because they are single files),
TCP networking, and extensive debugging support.

Because ZooLib requires only minimal support from the underlying OS and
platform
GUI layer, and because its platform-specific layer is well-architected,
it could 
be bound to a completely new platform in a few weeks of work once an
expert 
programmer was familiar with ZooLib internals.

One doesn't need to use all of ZooLib to build a program from just part
of it.  For example, one could use just the networking classes to build
a cross-platform network server with no UI, or one could combine that
with the database classes to build a database server.  Only a few
classes such as the thread implementation are 
required for all ZooLib programs.

While tonight marks ZooLib's transition into open source, it is _not_
new code.  
It has been in development by author Andy Green of The Electric Magic
Company
(http://www.em.net) and his client, educational software publisher
Learning in
Motion (http://www.learn.motion.com), for about five years, and there
are several shipping commercial products built with it.  Software
consultant GoingWare Inc. has been developing an unannounced product
with it since December '99. "I think it's the best thing since sliced
time," says GoingWare President Michael D. Crawford.

The version "0.8" is meant to indicate that ZooLib is fully production
quality on Windows and MacOS, completely implemented but untested on
BeOS, and mostly but not yet complete on Posix.  Details of what is
needed to bring ZooLib to 1.0 released are at
http://zoolib.sourceforge.net/doc/future.html
-- 
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford_at_[hidden]
  Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.