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1994-02-06
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TKERN - Troy's Kernel For Windows
=================================
Copyright 1994 Troy Rollo
LICENSING
This program is free software. Most of the files are under
the GNU General Public License. See the file "COPYING.LIB"
for details.
Two files, "links.c" and "stdio.c" are in the public domain.
WARRANTY
There is no warranty of any kind for TKERN. the file
"COPYING.LIB" for details.
PURPOSE
TKERN exists to fill a gap in the MS Windows 16 bit operating
environment - that of text oriented input and output, and of
sharing files between processes.
Two well known approaches to the text oriented input and output
problem already exist - EasyWin (by Borland) and QuickWin (by
Microsoft). These approaches suffer by being proprietary and by
the files that are opened in either of these systems cannot be
passed on to child processes (tasks).
It is envisaged that all text oriented programs for windows
could reasonably be converted for use with tkern. To this
end, use of TKERN for any project, including commercial
projects, is strongly encouraged.
Most of TKERN is under the GNU Library General Public License,
with a limited number of files being public domain. The choice
of licensing in the case of each file has been made in such
a way that your own programs will be completely unencumbered,
but any modifications to the kernel itself (TKERN.DLL) or
to the file manager (TKFMANGR.EXE) will become free software.
DESIGN OVERVIEW
There are three major components to TKERN - TKERN.DLL,
TKFMANGR.EXE, and the links.c and stdio.c files.
TKERN.DLL is the kernel interface. Your own code will
rarely, if ever, call this interface directly.
TKFMANGR.EXE is the TKERN File Manager. All files and
windows opened by other tasks using TKERN are in reality
owned by the TKERN File Manager. The TKERN File Manager
is started by TKERN.DLL, and is terminated when all
tasks using TKERN are terminated, and all windows created
by TKFMANGR.EXE are closed.
links.c and stdio.c are intended to be linked in to your
own programs. stdio.c is an implimentation of the familiar
standard input and output functions of C. links.c contains
WinMain as well as trampoline functions for tkern.dll.
Your code will call functions in either links.c or stdio.c,
which will call entry points in TKERN as necessary.
Because all the code under the GNU Library General Public
License is in TKERN (or TKFMANGR, which for all practical
purposes can be considered part of TKERN itself), you can
distribute your own programs fully compiled and linked.
TKERN, being a DLL, can be trivially replaced with a newer
version, thus satisfying the requirements of the license
to enable end users to be able to replace the library.