**README** for PLIB3.UI 0.12.1

:Author:        Peter A. Donis
:Release Date:  02 Jan 2022

The PLIB3.UI package contains a simple framework for
writing user interfaces in Python. The aim is to provide
two main features:

- It lets the same high-level code work with a number of
  different underlying user interface toolkits, by
  providing higher-level abstractions of UI functions.

- It allows you to express the layout of your UI declaratively
  using Python lists and dicts, and to focus on the code
  specific to your application with a minimum of boilerplate.

This package is intended as a replacement for the old ``plib.gui``
package, providing substantially the same underlying GUI support
but with a simpler and easier to use interface.

The ``setup.py`` script for PLIB3.UI uses the ``setuputils``
helper module, which helps to automate away much of the
boilerplate in Python setup scripts. This module is available
as a separate release at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuputils3.

Installation
------------

To install PLIB3.UI, you can simply run::

    $ python3 setup.py install

at a shell prompt from the directory into which you
unzipped the source tarball (the same directory that this
README file is in). This will install PLIB3 and then
run each of the post-install scripts in the scripts
directory.

Example Programs
----------------

PLIB3.UI comes with example programs that illustrate key features
of the package. After installation, these can be found in the
``$PREFIX/share/plib/examples`` directory. If you have a
POSIX system (Linux or Mac OSX), the ``plib-setup-examples``
post-install script will install symlinks to the example
programs in the ``$PREFIX/bin`` directory.

The Zen of PLIB3
----------------

There is no single unifying purpose or theme to PLIB3, but
like Python itself, it does have a 'Zen' of sorts:

- Express everything possible in terms of built-in Python
  data structures.

- Once you've expressed it that way, what the code is
  going to do with it should be obvious.

- Avoid boilerplate code, *and* boilerplate data. Every
  piece of data your program needs should have one and
  only one source.

Copyright and License
---------------------

PLIB3.UI is Copyright (C) 2008-2020 by Peter A. Donis.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version. (See the LICENSE file for a
copy of version 2 of the License.)

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
