FILE: CCF/ANNOUNCE

                          CCF
            Collaborative Computing Frameworks

                    Emory University
                    Atlanta, GA, USA
                       April 1998


Do you ever work with someone not in your office and wish that they
could look over your shoulder?  Then you might be interested in the
alpha release of our collaboration environment.

We are looking for alpha testers for our collaborative computing
framework.  CCF is an integrated environment supporting shared X
applications, multi-party communication, data/file sharing and (coming
soon) computation sharing.

For more details, please visit our web page at:
	 http://ccf.mathcs.emory.edu/

We really want to know what you think of this package.  Do you think
it might be useful to you?  What did you like about the system?  What
did you not like?  What worked or didn't work?  Did you have any
trouble compiling it?  Did the supplied binaries run?  Please
let us know by sending mail to ccf@mathcs.emory.edu, or fill out a
comment on the download page:
http://ccf.mathcs.emory.edu/ccf/software.html.  Thanks.


Features of the alpha release:
------------------------------
*  Remote users can share applications.  All users will see
   the application window; input (keyboard,mouse) may be 
   controlled by any one user at a time.
*  Shared virtual desktop. Shared X applications appear in a single
   virtual desktop which is WYSIWYS and has window manager functions.
*  Audio conferencing tool.  Multiuser, multiway internet telephone.
   Several people can speak at once.  Recording and playback available.
*  Text based chat for when bandwidth is limited or audio hardware is
   not available.   
*  Annotations of windows.  Any shared window can be drawn upon with
   "clearboard" tools.  All users will see the markings.
*  Shared data space. Users can import (upload) files and any user 
   can export (download). GUI based filespace manager (coming soon).
*  Shared computation space (coming soon).  Users can share their CPU
   cycles with everyone in the group.
*  CCF supplies an underlying transport layer for doing reliable
   multicast independent of the MBONE.  This library is suitable
   for other groupware  applications.

System requirements.  
   This alpha release runs on IRIX 6.2 and Sparc Solaris 5.5 and
   higher.  Collaborators can use any mixture of these operating
   systems.  Ports to other systems are under way and encouraged. 

To retrieve the latest source distribution via anonymous ftp or the Web:

    ftp://ftp.mathcs.emory.edu/pub/ccf
or
    http://ccf.mathcs.emory.edu/ccf/software.html

    CCF is distributed as a compressed (GZIP) tar file 
    e.g.    ccfalpha-src-980402.tar.gz
    that unpacks as a single source tree (./CCF) containing 
    C and C++ source files and makefiles. The top-level Makefile 
    creates architecture specific bin and lib subdirectories 
    (e.g. bin/SunOS-5.6 and lib/IRIX-6.2).

    CCF currently supports three platforms: IRIX-6.2, SunOS-5.6,
    and SunOS-5.5.1. The SunOS-5.6 version is the most thoroughly tested. 
    Distributions containing only binaries are available as:
	ccfalpha-bin-SunOS-5.6-980402.tar.gz
	ccfalpha-bin-SunOS-5.5.1-980402.tar.gz
	ccfalpha-bin-SunOS-5.5-980402.tar.gz
	ccfalpha-bin-IRIX-6.2-980402.tar.gz
        
    You may wish to try installing the binaries before attempting a source
    build. Occasionally the binaries fail to execute properly due to version
    inconsistencies with dynamically linked libraries.

Unpack the distribution using the GNU gtar utility:

        gtar xzvf ccfalpha-src-980402.tar.gz
  or
	zcat ccfalpha-src-980402.tar.gz | tar xvf

    The latest source distribution file is about 1M compressed, unpacks
    to 4M and expands by about 15-50M depending on your achitecture.
    This can be trimmed in half by running "make clean" after building
    to remove .o files.

The CCF Project at Emory University 

    CCF is a software system that supports collaborative, 
    distributed, computer-based problem solving in the natural 
    sciences, business, government, and in educational environments.  
    The goal is to evolve a virtual environment for distributed 
    computation that supports integrated human AV communication, 
    high performance heterogeneous computing and distributed data 
    management facilities. CCF is a research project at Emory University
    involving the Math/Computer Science and Chemistry departments.

Disclaimer:

    This is alpha release 0.99 of CCF -- Collaborative 
    Computing Frameworks.

    This software is provided as is with no warranty expressed 
    or implied. We hope you find it useful, but we won't be held 
    responsible for any damage that may occur from reading, 
    compiling, installing, using, or even thinking about it.


License:

    CCF is Copyright (C) 1998 by Emory University except for the 
    code in directories GSM, LPC, LPC10 in the CCFaudio directory 
    and is distributed under the terms of GNU General Public 
    License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LPGL). 

    The alpha version of CCF is free software; you can redistribute it 
    and/or modify it 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.


Credits:

    CCF was created by Vaidy Sunderam, Injong Rhee, 
    Alan Krantz, Shun Yan Cheung, Julie Sult, 
    Soeren Olesen, Paul Gray, Phil Hutto, Sarah Chodrow, 
    Michael Hirsch, Ted Goddard, Mic Grigni, N. Balaguru,
    Jim Nettles, Luigi Marzilli, Sue Onuschak, Scott Childs, 
    Kevin Williams.

    The CCF project is sponsored by the U.S. National 
    Science Foundation under the multidisciplinary challenges 
    initiative.   
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