Introduction

Karma is a toolkit for interprocess communications, authentication, encryption, graphics display, user interface and manipulating the Karma network data structure. It contains KarmaLib (the structured libraries and API) and a large number of modules (applications) to perform many standard tasks.
A wide range of visualisation applications have been developed with Karma.

Overfile of file layout

When files and directories are referred to, they are given relative to the root Karma directory (environment variable KARMABASE if defined). This is usually /usr/local/karma Please see the file INSTALL for instructions on how to install Karma.

The update policy for Karma is in the file doc/update-policy

The README.lib file contains documentation for the Karma libraries.

The doc/modules directory contains documentation for the various Karma modules. This directory may be a little sparse...

The doc/howto directory contains information on how to make good use of some of the more interesting packages in KarmaLib.

The doc/widgets directory contains information on the Karma Widgets library. This directory may be a little sparse...

Mailing lists

Please mail any bug reports to: karma-bugs@atnf.csiro.au No warranty, express or implied should be inferred by this mailing address.

If you want to be added to the mailing list (to find out what's changed with Karma), please mail the request to: karma-request@atnf.csiro.au
This mailing list is VERY important: as bugs are fixed and enhancements made to Karma, this is your only way of finding out about these changes. This mailing list only contains announcements of public releases (i.e. full releases with source code), which occur once or twice a year. If you want to receive announcements of beta releases (binary-only distributions), which occur once or twice a month, please mail the request to:
karma-beta-request@atnf.csiro.au

If you have any suggestions for Karma, please mail them to: karma-suggestions@atnf.csiro.au

FTP and WWW site

Karma is available for anonymous ftp from: ftp://ftp.atnf.csiro.au/pub/software/karma/ Both the source code and binary distributions are kept here. The source code is available free of charge. There is also a WWW page for the library:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/karma/

The Karma World Wide Web page is: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/karma/ This provides online access to the documentation and ftp site.

You are urged to get the binary distribution if possible, as this will save you the effort of building from source. When connecting to the ftp server, check the modification dates on the source distribution and the binary distribution. If the source distribution is much newer than the binary distribution you want, this means that the binary distribution is out of date. Please send an Email request to:
karma-suggestions@atnf.csiro.au
for a rebuilt version to be made available. I don't have local access to many machines, so I don't rebuild automatically for every platform.

Copyleft

Karma modules use the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. For the complete text of this license, please see the file: doc/COPYING

These programmes are free software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

These programmes are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this software; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

KarmaLib uses the GNU Library General Public License, version 2 or later. For the complete text of this license, please see the file: doc/COPYING.LIB

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.