text2gui Evaluation README

Thank you for evaluating the text2gui library! This document contains the information you need to install and get started using the software.

License Agreement

If you haven't done so already, please read the Evaluation License Agreement which you must accept in order to copy, install, or use this software.

Installation

To install the software, simply extract the contents of the archive into a directory. No system settings need to be set, except perhaps setting the classpath if you don't want to set the classpath each time you use the text2gui library. See Setting the Classpath and Running below.

Please note that Java 1.4 or above is required to use the software.

Contents

The following is a description of the contents of this archive:

README.html: The file you are currently reading. DUH!

Application_License.html: A license agreement you must accept in order to copy, install, or use this software.

text2gui-1.0-eval.jar: The binary code archive that implements the text2gui library. This is the evaluation version, so it displays nag screens periodically and expires after the evaluation period. This archive may not be redistributed!

guieditor.jar: A binary code archive that provides the GUI Editor and Text Editor applications. It is built from the source code in src.

bin/*.exe: Windows executables for the GUI Editor, Text Editor, and BeanShell Calculator applications. These must not be moved!
bin/*: Unix shell scripts to run the GUI Editor, Text Editor, and BeanShell Calculator applications. These must not be moved!

demo/: Demonstrations of text2gui in action!
demo/applet: Contains the binary code and HTML code for an applet, called TimeZoneApplet, that uses text2gui. Before testing, please read the file README.txt.
demo/applet/src: Contains the source code for TimeZoneApplet.
demo/calc/: Contains the source code for the BeanShell Calculator.

doc/: Contains documentation for the text2gui library.
doc/api/: Contains Javadoc for the API provided by the text2gui library.

examples/: Contains properties files that demonstrate how to build components with text2gui. Intended to be tested with GUI Editor.

lib/: Contains full versions of the third-party libraries that the text2gui library needs to run.
lib/bsh-2.0b1.jar: The full version of the BeanShell library. To reduce bandwidth/space requirements, it's possible to use a subset of the BeanShell library instead; see the BeanShell homepage.
lib/log4j-1.2.8.jar: The log4j library.
lib/facade/: Contains "facade" versions of the libraries in lib/. These drop-in replacement libraries are much smaller, but provide none or a limited subset of the functionality of the full libraries. See README.txt for details.

src/: Contains the source code for the Text Editor and GUI Editor applications.
src/com/taco/swinger/text2gui/appbase/: Includes base classes and properties files useful for building your own application with text2gui.
src/com/taco/swinger/: Contains the source code for a font chooser component, written using text2gui of course.
src/com/taco/swinger/text/: Contains the source code for the Text Editor application, and a text find/replace module. The Text Editor application can be subclassed, and its properties files reused, to implement your own text editor.

Learning to use text2gui

If you're a new user of the text2gui library, you'll learn about the design and capabilities of the text2gui library. Start with the documentation. Then you'll want to look at the examples and demos. Finally, take a look at the functionality provided by the com.taco.swinger.text2gui.appbase package.

Setting the Classpath and Running

If you are only using the functionality of the text2gui library, not the demo applications, you need to add the locations of text2gui-1.0-eval.jar, log4j-1.2.8.jar, and bsh-2.0b1.jar to your CLASSPATH environment variable. For example, if you extracted the distribution archive to the C: drive on a Windows machine, you might set the classpath as

c:\myproj;c:\text2gui-1.0-eval\text2gui-1.0-eval.jar;c:\text2gui-1.0-eval\lib\log4j-1.2.8.jar;c:\text2gui-1.0-eval\lib\bsh-2.0b1.jar

To run the demos or the GUI Editor, you need only to run the executables or scripts in the bin/ directory.

Help and Support

This evaluation version comes with no support, but bug reports and suggestions are always welcome. If you have other questions or concerns, you may contact us but we make no guarantee that we will respond in a timely manner or even at all. Please purchase a license in order to get real support.

Before contacting Taco Software directly, please see the web page for troubleshooting advice, frequently asked questions, updates to the library or its documentation, and a forum. If you still can't find what you need, you may contact us at support@tacosoftware.com. In your message please include the following information:
Credits

We wish to thank the following individuals and organizations that made this product possible:
We are proud of our product and we hope that you will find our product helpful for your software development needs. We look forward to having you as a licensed user. Please see the Taco Software web site for details.