*****************************************************************************
*                                                                           *
*                           »Library Guidelines«                            *
*                                                                           *
*****************************************************************************

                               1. Introduction

Amiga at this point in time has no anchor or company support which could
handle occuring or recurring problems. In this document we will try to bring
out one problem which comes to our attention  - namely:

           The naming and installation of Amiga shared libraries.

Should a suitable company appear on the horizon in the future or near future
which is interested in the development of the Amiga, this document will be
then sent to them in the hope that the company will manage the things we
mention herewith.

As long as there is no such company 
              Heiko Schroeder - <s93324@fh-telekom-leipzig.de> 
who handles "The largest AMIGA shared libraries guide" will act as a 
substitute regarding these guidelines for the company we all hope will take 
over Amiga and hopefully take an interest in it.


                        2. Library naming guidelines

- Each Amiga shared library must have an unique name to avoid mistakes which
  might end up in crashing software. To reach this goal it is required that
  each library name must be registered.

  The registration can be done via:

  WWW       : http://...      (not available at this moment)

  EMail     : Heiko Schroeder - <s93324@fh-telekom-leipzig.de>
              Subject: Library registration

  Snail mail: Heiko Schroeder
              Arnoldstr. 1
              04299 Leipzig
              GERMANY

         Please use the registration form for email and snail mail!

  On the Libraries WWW Page you can also search for existing names!

- Library names should always identify the functionality of the library.
  Application specific libraries should start with the name or grammar
  of the application and a name that also covers the functionality of the
  library.


                         3. Installation guidelines

 - Universal usable libraries which are distributed with Autodocs and as
   a minimum the C-Interface file are allowed to be installed within "Libs:".
   It is preffered to distribute libraries with interfaces for the following
   languages:
   * C
   * Assembler
   * Amiga-E
   * Modula-II
   * Oberon

 - Big library systems like MUI, XPK etc. should always be installed within
   their own directory tree (like MUI did) and then do an
   'assign add LIBS: MUI:Libs' within the "user-startup" file.
   This will allow an easier uninstallation of such systems.

 - Application specific libraries and libraries without an interface/Autodocs
   must always be installed within "PROGDIR:Libs/"


                                 4. Summary

Library authors who are not following these guidelines will be requested to
follow these guidelines. When they ignore such a request, their libraries will
be declared as illegal by putting them onto a black-list.
As a result from being on the black-list such a library will not longer be
distributable via Aminet, Meeting Pearls etc.

*****************************************************************************

written by:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Kai Hofmann             EMail: i07m@informatik.uni-bremen.de
FB 3, Informatik        WWW  : http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~i07m/
Universität Bremen      IRC  : PowerStat
-------------------------------------------------------------------