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[libt2n] / doc / index.doc

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 /*! \mainpage libt2n - (talk to neighbor)
  \section intro_sec Introduction
  libt2n (talk to neighbor) is a C++ library for inter-process communication (IPC, s.a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication)
- with an additional code generator to make remote procedure calls simple. 
+ with an additional code generator to make remote procedure calls (RPC, s.a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_procedure_call) simple. (another solution perhaps would be to use C++ templates similar to postyyyman <http://www.erikyyy.de/sigslot/postyyyman/postyyyman-1.0.3/doc/README.html> or dope <http://dope.berlios.de> - the main reason to use a code generator was that we wanted to build libraries which could be used on client side easily).
+
+  \htmlonly    
+  <img src="http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au/webservices/rpc_stub.png" alt="rpc"/>
+  <p>Figure: Remote procedure call overview (http://jan.netcomp.monash.edu.au/webservices/rpc_stub.png)</p>
+  \endhtmlonly
+
  \par 
- XXX: improve this paragraph: The input for the code generator is standard C++ code (in fact we use gccxml to parse the C++ code and the code generator takes the XML as input) and you mark the procedures you want to expose to other processes.
- It then generates the stubs needed.
- The exported procedures can be grouped. For each group the code generator is called and generates 6 output files: group_common.hxx, group_common.cpp, group_client.hxx, group_client.cpp, group_server.hxx, group_server.cpp. The _common files are used by client and server whereas the _client files are used by the client and the _server files by the server only.
+ XXX: improve this paragraph: The input for the code generator is standard C++ code (in fact we use gccxml to parse the C++ code and the code generator takes the XML as input) and you mark the procedures you want to expose to other processes. (no need for an interface definition language [IDL, s.a  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_description_languageIDL])
+ It then generates the client and server stubs needed.
+ The exported procedures can be grouped. For each group the code generator is called and generates 6 output files: group_common.hxx, group_common.cpp, group_client.hxx, group_client.cpp, group_server.hxx, group_server.cpp. The _common files are used by client and server whereas the _client files are used by the client and the _server files by the server only. Each group maps to two classes (cmd_group_... and cmd_group_..._client).
  \par
  To simplify the build process a Makefile snippet is provided that allows to create a server program and a client library (including a corresponding .pc file) using the autotools easily.
  \section install_sec Installation