$Id: README,v 1.5 2003/12/29 02:27:55 dfs Exp $

Quick Overview
--------------

CHANGES - lists recent changes to the source code
COMPILE - contains quick instructions for building the library
CONTRIBUTORS - lists people who have contributed to developing the code
ISSUES  - contains a list of known bugs
KEYS    - lists PGP keys used to sign releases
LICENSE - the license defining the terms of use of the software
README  - this file
STYLE   - a set of guidelines for developers of the code
TODO    - lists planned or possible changes/additions

build/   - directory containing the files necessary to build the software
src/java - directory containing the library source, example programs, and
           a utility program for converting old ORO source to Jakarta-ORO
docs/    - directory where generated documentation is stored
classes/ - directory created when building the library; contains the class
           files

Description
-----------

The Jakarta-ORO Java classes are a set of text-processing Java classes
that provide Perl5 compatible regular expressions, AWK-like regular
expressions, glob expressions, and utility classes for performing
substitutions, splits, filtering filenames, etc.  This library is
the successor to the OROMatcher, AwkTools, PerlTools, and TextTools
libraries from ORO, Inc. (www.oroinc.com).  They have been donated to
the Jakarta Project by Daniel Savarese (www.savarese.org), the
copyright holder of the original oroinc.com ORO libraries.  Daniel
will continue to participate in their development under the Jakarta
Project.


Building
--------

Build instructions are in the COMPILE file.  For the impatient, execute
build.sh in the build directory.


Converting Old Code
-------------------

If you need to migrate old source that uses the com.oroinc package
prefixes, you can use the provided oroToApache program from the
src/tools directory to automate the conversion of your source code.


Brief History (for the curious)
------------------------------

ORO, Inc. was a Java tools company that started in 1997 and stopped
doing business a year and a half later when the tools market didn't
pan out as well as anticipated.  Other tools companies disappeared at
about the same time included, including JScape.  So it goes.

ORO produced several Java class libraries that became very popular
among Java developers and were licensed by companies such as IBM,
Compaq, AOL, Netscape, and you get the picture.  Daniel Savarese, one
of ORO's founders, continued maintaining these libraries after ORO
dissolved but did not have time to provide adequate support and
feature improvements for developers.  Because of licensing
restrictions with other companies, the source code could not be
immediately released as an open source project.  That is, until now
(June 2000).

Jakarta-ORO combines all of the former ORO text processing libraries
into one package under the Apache Software License.  The software was
donated to the Apache Software Foundation because of the great strides
they have made for server-side Java.  The largest group of developers
using the ORO text processing libraries are servlet developers, so it
seemed like a perfect fit.
