Welcome to Cosmoe 0.8!


INSTALLATION
------------
Cosmoe is built using the same method as most open-source software:

./configure
make
 { become root }
make install

If you plan to edit the Cosmoe sources, you will want to build
dependencies immediately after ./configure by peforming "make deps".

PREREQUISITES
-------------
Using any gcc version prior to 3.0 is unsupported and may fail to
compile Cosmoe.  gcc 2.96 (though not 2.95 or earlier) worked at one
point, but has not been tested by the author in quite some time.

You must have ONE of the following graphics output mechanisms
installed and active (configure invocation shown below each):

1. XWindows, including the development headers
   ./configure
2. a Linux kernel which supports a framebuffer, and have the
   framebuffer active (unsupported as of this writing)
   ./configure --enable-framebuffer
3. DirectFB, including the development headers
   ./configure --enable-directfb
4. SDL, including the development headers
   ./configure --enable-sdl

As of this writing, SDL is the best supported output option, and Linux
framebuffer is the least supported (and may not even work at all).

Cosmoe is developed under Linux kernel 2.6.7 and gcc 3.4.1 using the
Fedora Core 2 distribution.  However, any kernel version 2.4.22 or
later, along with any version of gcc3 should be sufficient to compile
and run Cosmoe.  Note that I rarely if ever test on 2.4 kernels any
more since I do not have a 2.4-kernel-based system in use any longer.
Cosmoe may also be configured and run under MacOS X or NetBSD using
XWindows or SDL output mode.

RUNNING COSMOE
--------------
Some basic rules for running in framebuffer mode:
1. You must not be in the same virtual terminal as X.
2. You must not be running gpm (you can kill it with "gpm -k")
3. You must have a 16-bit or better framebuffer active (I put "vga=788"
   in my lilo.conf, but there are plenty of other methods to establish
   a framebuffer).  On most distros, you can check for the existence of
   /dev/fb0 to make sure, or you can use fbset if available.

To launch Cosmoe:
Run the cosmoe.sh shell script as root

To quit Cosmoe, simply close the Cosmoe window.  If you are running in
fullscreen mode, press escape. This is obviously a temporary state of
affairs until a more advanced input/rendering engine is in place.

PROBLEMS
--------
If Cosmoe fails to compile for you, please let me know by e-mail.

If a Cosmoe app crashes, please send me a backtrace.

If the appserver crashes you can check the file server.out for some
hopefully helpful information.

API DOCUMENTATION
-----------------
Since Cosmoe now conforms quite closely to the Be API, the best
API documentation to use is the BeBook, available at several sites
online.

You can also go to the libcosmoe directory and run "make doc" if you
have doxygen installed.  Limited html documentation will then be
produced in the docs directory inside the libcosmoe directory.

MAKING SOURCE CHANGES
---------------------
Source code improvements are welcomed!  Please visit www.cosmoe.com to
see the latest bug reports and enhancement requests.

If you are making source code changes to libcosmoe or the appserver, you
should run "make deps" to ensure that dependencies will be created and
used.  Once this command is run, the dependencies will automatically be
updated from that point forward until such time as a "make clean" or
"make distclean" is performed.

Any questions?  E-mail me (Bill Hayden) and I'll try to clear things up.

Author's E-mail:
[email protected]

Websites:
www.cosmoe.com
www.sf.net/projects/cosmoe

Mailing Lists:
www.topica.com/lists/cosmoe       (General Cosmoe Discussion)
www.topica.com/lists/cosmoe-devel (CVS commit mailing list)