README

README - Sparrow real-time display library
$Id: README 12599 2007-01-08 03:47:23Z murray $

Sparrow is a C library for implementing real-time control systems
under Linux.  It was written to be a very simple set of functions that
can be run with very modest hardware requirements.

To install the sparrow libraries, run the 'configure' script and then
'make install'.  Additional documentation is available in sparrow.info
(created from sparrow.txi).

History
-------
The sparrow library was originally written in the late 1980s to
implement real-time controllers under MSDOS.  Its earlier versions
consisted of three primary components: a real-time servo library, a
device driver interface and a simple dynamic display driver.  Because
MSDOS had no facilities for pre-emptive multi-tasking, the original
version of sparrow used low-level interrupt service routes to
implement servo loops.  Since a PC at the time ran on a 66 MHz clock,
sparrow was designed to be extremely efficient in the way that it
implemented its functions.

Once Windows came along, development of sparrow came to a slow halt.
Version 2.1g of sparrow, which was the most commonly used release, was
released in 1995, although some development activities continued
through 1999 as part of the rarely used 3.1 and 3.2 releases.  Sparrow
was revied in late 2003 as part of Caltech DARPA Grand Challenge
project - we needed a simple way to display the status of real-time
controllers under Linux and the sparrow display package was a good
fit.

The Linux version of sparrow was developed from the DGC version of
Sparrow and released as open source code.

RMM, 21 Dec 03