Overview

The GNU classes included in this version of the library fall into five categories: collections, magnitudes, streams, coders and remote messaging support.

• The collection objects all conform to the `Collecting' protocol. Reading `./objects/Collecting.h' is a good place to start. Protocols for collections that store their contents with keys and with indices can be found in `./objects/KeyedCollecting.h' and `./objects/IndexedCollecting.h' respectively. Examples of generic collections are `Set' and `Bag'. The keyed collections are `Dictionary' and `MappedCollector'. The classes `Array', `Queue', `GapArray', `LinkedList', `BinaryTree', `RBTree' and `SplayTree' are all indexed collections.
• The useful magnitude classes are `Time' and `Random'. The `Random' class works in conjunction with pseudo-random number generators that conform to the `RandomGenerating' protocol. The conforming class `RNGBerkeley' provides identical behavior to the BSD random() function. The class `RNGAdditiveCongruential' is an implementation of the additive congruential method.
• Stream objects provide a consistent interface for reading and writing bytes. Read `./objects/Stream.h' to get the general idea. `StdioStream' objects work with files, file descriptors, FILE pointers and pipes to executables. `MemoryStream' objects work with memory buffers.
• Coders provide a formatted way of writing to Streams. After a coder is initialized with a stream, the coder can encode/decode Objective C objects and C types. See `./objects/Coder.h' for the abstract superclass interface; see `./objects/Coding.h' for the protocol adopted by objects that read and write themselves using coders. The currently available concrete coders are `BinaryCoder', for reading and writing a compact stream of illegible bytes, and `TextCoder', for reading and writing human-readable text. Coders and streams can be mixed and matched so that programmers can choose the destination and the format separately. Neither the stream or coder class heirarchies are very mature yet. I threw them together because I needed them for remote object messaging.
• The remote object messaging support classes are `Connection', `Proxy', `ConnectedCoder', `Port' and `SocketPort'.