This is the README file for Swiss Ephemeris library documentation made
with autotools on GNU/LINUX or other autotools friendly environments.
As of today, no changes have been made to the original Swiss Ephemeris
source code.

This is the Swiss Ephemeris library documentation files from astrodienst.
Pdf and .html files are created from the corresponding doc files.
The man pages are not found here, they are found with the libswe-dev
packages.

The folks at astrodiest are execelent astrological programers and they
have excellent documentation. However, they are not very good at
creating source tarballs that can serve as a base for a free software
package. The source files in this distribution come from
ftp://ftp.astro.com/pub/swisseph/sweph.zip.  This file is GPLed and is
therefore freely redistributable.  However, it can not serve as a base
for a free software package, because:
1) It contains MS binaries, which can not be rebuild from source
in a free software project.
2) It is a .zip file not a tar file.
3) It is unversioned so it gets wiped out from their web/ftp 
site everytime there is a new release. (This is addresed by
Swiss Ephemeris AutoTools by saving these files in version
dependent subdirectories.)

The swe_unix_src_X.XX.00.tar.gz files are also unsuitable,
because they do not contain the source for the documentation
i.e. the .doc files.

So we at Swiss Ephemeris AutoTools, fork the Swiss Ephemeris inso far
as distribution issues are concerned. We grab the .doc files we need
from sweph.zip. We add auto* tools files to build the documentation
from source and distribute. We put everyting in a tarball suitable for
use by a debian or RPM based distro.

Format of source version. The current source version is
1.79.00.0001. In this number is the source version of the Astrodienst
files. That is this version of the Swiss Ephemeris library
documentation for Autotools is based on the file
sweph.zip from Astrodienst. The 0001 part indicates
this is the first version for the autotools part.
The folks at astrodienst do not save their distribution files
by version number. Thus when a new version comes out, the old
version is wiped out on the astrodienst web/ftp site. In order to
maintain an historical record, thie sweph.zip files are also stored
in the Swiss Ephemeris AutoTools download area in version dependent
subdirectories. Thus the file, 
http://download.gna.org/swissephauto/astrodienst/sweph1.78/sweph.zip
will be the 1.78 version of this file. The source files we use are:
swephprg.doc and swisseph.doc.

The Swiss Ephemeris also runs under MSDOS, Windows, and other
environments. For that version see: http://www.astro.com/swisseph/

The file COPYING and LICENSE  describe the license for this version
of the program.

the doc subdirectory contains the original documentation which exhaustively
documents the API.

The file INSTALL tells how the documentation may be installed.

The files are organized like this:


$(top_builddir)  -----|  main autotools control files including configure.ac
                 |
                 +----|  $(top_builddir)/doc -- build autotools files for
                 |                              documentation
                 +----|  $(top_builddir)/astrodocsrc =$(astrodocsrc)
                                                Astrodienst source files.
                                                Resourced by Paul Elliott.
                                                contains note from astrodienst
                                                asserting the LICENSE.


The astrodienst distribution contains pdf and html files that document
the library extensively. These files have been rebuild from their
sources in the for GNU/LINUX versions. Refer to these files for all
documentation.

