Aesop Developer's Page

This document contains details of the design and implementation of Aesop and should function as a "living document" for developers on the project. It covers conventions and procedures for the group as well as the details of the current incarnation of the Aesop system. It still needs a lot of work to be made current, including writing some much needed high level design documentation.

Basic Documents

Anyone doing development on Aesop should be familiar with the following documents.

Getting Started contains information about checking out the aesop modules from CVS and configuring and maintaining a workspace.
A User's Guide for the Fcl system. Fcl is a persistent object-oriented language and run-time system that we built on top of Tcl/Tk. This includes documentation for the FAM classes which define a design as well as explanation of the object system itself.
Brief documentation for the Event System . Outlines the commands available for registering to receive events in FCL.
The ABLE UI Library design document describes the structure of the UI library. People developing new visualizations and styles will probably want to look at this.
Programming a Style in Aesop provides a step-by-step description of what needs to be done to create a new style with the Aesop system. We are currently working on making the style definition process more simple and clean.
Development conventions used by the Aesop developers.
A guide to using CVS in the development of large projects.
CVS docs specific to ABLE. Still under construction. Based upon the above docs -- and will replace them eventually.

Technical Documents

The normal developer shouldn't have to worry about this stuff for the most part.

The Administrator's Guide contains information about adminstrating CVS, rhodope, how the ABLE project AFS space is organized and about maintaining Aesop.
The Design and Implementation of Fcl is described in this design document. It also includes information about the Fcl implementation for those who want to explore Fcl in depth.

Legacy Documents

These are some old docs which may or may not be relevant to the current system.

Compiling and Administering Aesop tells you how to get and build the Aesop system. Not for the faint of heart.
The Event System Design and Implementation Document describes the details of the event system and tool server. This may not be up to date.

ABLE Project Management

This is info. about current design and development activities, deadlines and specific action items.

A list of in-progress development action items.

A The beginnings of an actual project management database.

The Aesop New Design

Design documentation and proposals for the new Aesop design are stored in the following links (all of these are, or should be, local access only).

An attempt to capture the new Aesop system architecture.
An Aesop glossary
Ralph Melton's discussion of Aesop re-design issues. (last updated 7/22/95).
Bob Monroe and Ralph Melton's proposal for dealing with design rules. (last updated 3/27/96).
Bob Monroe's proposal for a redesigned Software Shelf. (last updated 2/6/96).
Ralph Melton's document on the proposed internal architecture of the FAM library. (last updated 4/2/96).
Zhenyu Wang's document on connector to WRIGHT checker. (last updated 4/16/96).

Hey, ABLE developers, have a good idea or design document that you want to contribute? Then read these instructions for posting your document.

For discussion on development issues relating to Aesop, check out the cmu.cs.proj.able newsgroup (local access only).

Some other pointers that might be useful:

The TCL WWW page has lots of useful documentation and info about Tcl/Tk.
The CVS Information page has thorough html'ized documentation for CVS.

Return to Aesop home page

Return to ABLE home page

Aesop Maintainer (aesop-help+@cs.cmu.edu)