root/trunk/rgc/README

                                RGC
                the Remote GLib(-inspired) Call protocol
                           development version
                            
The RGC library allows a server and one or more client programs to talk over a
local or remote connection using both an simple binary protocol (using
network TCP or local UNIX-domain sockets) and standard-based ones (such as OSC
and D-BUS), using object-oriented techniques.

It is Free Software, available under a LGPL license. It is written in pure C,
and depends only on the GLib 2.x library (available from www.gtk.org) and
standard POSIX system calls. Altought primarily written and tested on GNU/Linux
systems, it should work on others UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems (it was
reported to work at least on FreeBSD and Darwin/Apple OS X). A Microsoft Windows
is in an experimental stage.

It's very much a work in progress (and it WILL change significantly in the
future), but it is now usable for simple applications.
It is primarily developed for FreeMix, a Free Software DJ audio mixing
application, where is used to connect togheter the audio processing backend
(the "server") to the graphical-or-not user interfaces ("clients").

Its goals:
    * simple lightweight connection protocol
    * fast response time
    * asyncronous execution
    * an object model built around GLib. More exactly:
        * object creation and destruction
        * getting and setting properties on objects
        * calling methods on objects
        * launching, receving and catching signals
        
Many parts of the library are implemented using standard GLib functions, to get
advantage of object data handling, reference counting, ...
Every value (integers, floats, strings...) is sent to one process to another
using GValues.

To get an idea of how it works, take a look at the simple examples in the /test
directory and at the source of FreeMix.

The latest version is available at "http://ciampix.net/proj/freemix".