ZooLib Cross-Platform Framework Released Under MIT License
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 project page is http://sourceforge.net/projects/zoolib/ and its web page is
http://zoolib.sourceforge.net
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 fewl
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 and his client, educational software publisher Learning in
Motion, 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
2000-11-08 01:26:14 UTC by goingware
