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--- en:user_advanced:z3950 [2014/04/13 23:52] – external edit 127.0.0.1
+++ en:user_advanced:z3950 [2018/03/26 01:29] – [Known Problems/Issues list] kjdon
@@ Line 144: / Line 144: @@
   * **The Z39.50 client will not work when fast-cgi is used**. Currently, the use of the fast-cgi package (off by default) will disable the use of the Z39.50 client code for Greenstone.
   * When viewing a Z39.50 "collection" in Greenstone, sometimes the browser may insert a large amount of space between the collection title and the navigation bar. Reload or Shift Reload should fix this problem.
+===== About z39.50 =====
+Sometimes, the best explanation is the simplest one. Z39.50 is a network protocol that provides
+access to information systems.
+Z39.50 was originally developed to meet the needs of libraries to integrate their online catalog
+systems. It has since been adopted by various other domains, and it remains arguably the most
+flexible, versatile and efficient information retrieval around. It is also open; the specification
+can be downloaded freely from the net.
+It has been considered complex by some, but its flexibility is mostly derived from the fact that it
+is a fairly complete model of the task if information retrieval -- and from that follows a certain
+measure of complexity.
+We still consider Z39.50 to be an important building block in the construction of information
+architectures, and much of our work in the past has been about maximising the usefulness and
+minimising the complexity of Z39.50 by providing well-designed toolkits for programmers wishing to
+implement the protocol. You'll find much more information about our tools under the software page.
+===== About YAZ =====
+YAZ stands for Yet Another Z39.50 toolkit.
+YAZ is a compact toolkit that provides access to the Z39.50 and SRW/SRU protocols, as well as a
+set of higher-level tools for implementing the server and client roles, respectively. The documentation
+can be used on its own, or as a reference when looking at the example applications provided with
+the package.
+=== How to make apps using YAZ on UNIX ===
+http://www.indexdata.dk/yaz/doc/installation.unix.tkl#id2528482
+This section describes how to compile - and link your own applications using the YAZ toolkit.
+If you're used to Makefiles this shouldn't be hard. As for other libraries you have used before,
+you have to set a proper include path for your C/C++ compiler and specify the location of YAZ
+libraries. You can do it by hand, but generally we suggest you use the yaz-config that is generated
+by configure. This is especially important if you're using the threaded version of YAZ which requires
+you to pass more options to your linker/compiler.
+The yaz-config script accepts command line options that makes the yaz-config script print options that
+you should use in your make process. The most important ones are: --cflags, --libs which prints C compiler
+flags, and linker flags respectively.
+A small and complete Makefile for a C application consisting of one source file, myprog.c, may look
+like this:
+ YAZCONFIG=/usr/local/bin/yaz-config
+ CFLAGS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --cflags`
+ LIBS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --libs`
+ myprog: myprog.o
+ $ (CC) $(CFLAGS) -o myprog myprog.o $(LIBS)
+The CFLAGS variable consists of a C compiler directive that will set the include path to the parent
+directory of yaz. That is, if YAZ header files were installed in /usr/local/include/yaz, then include
+path is set to /usr/local/include. Therefore, in your applications you should use
+ # include <yaz/proto.h>
+ and not
+ # include <proto.h>
+For Libtool users, the yaz-config script provides a different variant of option --libs, called
+--lalibs that returns the name of the Libtool acrhive(s) for YAZ rather than the ordinary ones.
+For applications using the threaded version of YAZ, specify threads after the other options. When
+threads is given, more flags and linker flags will be printed by yaz-config. If our previous example
+was using threads, you'd have to modify the lines that set CFLAGS and LIBS as follows:
+ CFLAGS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --cflags threads`
+ LIBS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --libs threads`
+There is no need specify POSIX thread libraries in your Makefile. The LIBS variable includes that
+as well.