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                   XIT -- The X User Interface Toolkit
            
  Copyright (c) 1994: Research Group DRUID
                      University of Stuttgart
                      Department of Computer Science
                      Breitwiesenstr. 20-22
                      D-70565 Stuttgart
                      Germany

                      Juergen Herczeg
                      Hubertus Hohl
                      Matthias Ressel
                      Phone:  +49 711 7816 {364,359,302}
                      Fax:    +49 711 7816 340
                      E-mail: druid@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de


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XIT (X User Interface Toolkit) is an object-oriented user interface
development environment for the X Window System based on Common Lisp,
CLOS, CLX, and CLUE.  It has been developed by the Research Group
DRUID at the Department of Computer Science of the University of
Stuttgart as a framework for Common Lisp/CLOS applications with
graphical user interfaces for the X Window System.  The work is based
on the USIT system developed by the Research Group INFORM at the
University of Stuttgart.

XIT contains user interface toolkits, including general building
blocks and mechanisms for building arbitrary user interface elements
and a set of predefined common elements (widgets), as well as
high-level interactive tools for constructing, inspecting, and
modifying user interfaces by means of direct manipulation.

With XIT, user interfaces for various applications in different
application domains have been implemented, e.g., high-level user
interface development tools (partly included in the XIT distribution),
programming tools for CLOS, information systems, and multimedia
applications.

Although the system kernel is quite stable, XIT is still under active
development, i.e. bugs are fixed, modifications and extensions are
made whenever new requirements arise.


Version:
========

For the currently distributed version of XIT see the file defsystem.lisp.  
Changes to previous releases can be found in the file CHANGES.


Copying:
========

Copying of part or all of any file in the XIT package
is allowed under the conditions listed in the file COPYRIGHT_NOTICE.
 

Installation:
=============

Installation instructions can be found in the file INSTALLATIONS.

Bugs, Comments:
===============

Please report bugs, enhancements and other comments, especially positive
or negative experiences, to the following e-mail address:

  xit@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
 
Thanks.


Documentation:
==============

Compressed PostScript files for the (partly incomplete) XIT Manual and
several papers can be found in the directory doc (see local README
file for further details).


Modules:
========

User Interface Toolkit:
-----------------------

The user interface toolkit for XIT is contained in the "kernel"
directory.

Metasystem and Construction Kit:
--------------------------------

XIT provides a metasystem and construction kit for interactively
building and modifying user interfaces by means of visual programming,
e.g., an interface builder (cf. XIT Manual). These subsystems can be
found in the directories "xam" and "xact", respectively.

Examples:
---------

Example programs demonstrating the basic functionality and extent
of XIT can be found in the directory "examples" (see local README file
for instructions on how to start the demos).


Utilities:
----------

Several utility programs are distributed with XIT. They can be found
in the directory "utilities" (see local README file
for instructions on how to start them).



Thanks for your interest in XIT, and we hope that it works well for you.

   The DRUIDs