                          README File
                          -----------

                  ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite 
                         Version 1.00
                          06/01/1998

Contents
--------
  Overview
  Audience
  System Requirements
  Installation Procedures
  Known Problems
  Contents of This Release


Overview
--------

The ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite is a suite of non-visual beans 
intended for organizing visual work process with archives. Now 
it includes two beans:

1. The JarFileAccessor Bean covers functionality of the JAR.EXE
   command and performs the following functions:

  - adds files to the Jar file;
  - replaces files in the Jar file;
  - removes files from the Jar file;
  - extracts files from the Jar file;
  - renames files in the Jar file;
  - gets the contents of the Jar file;
  - supports the manifest file.

2. The ZipFileAccessor Bean performs the following functions:

  - adds files to the Zip file;
  - replaces files in the Zip file;
  - removes files from the Zip file;
  - extracts files from the Zip file;
  - renames files in the Zip file;
  - gets the contents of the Zip file.


Audience
--------

This document describes the ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite. It is
intended for application assemblers who can use the component in
a visual builder as well as in manual programming. It is assumed
that they are already familiar with JavaBeans. If terms like
property, event, method, introspection, or serialization are
unfamiliar, they may refer to the JavaBeans documentation or
take the JavaBeans tutorial.


System Requirements
-------------------

The ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite has been written in pure Java 
and will run on any system that supports JDK 1.1 or above. The
archiveaccessor.jar file takes about 70KB of disk space. This
includes all of the customization classes as well.


Installation Procedures
-----------------------

a) Using the ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite as JavaBeans

To use the ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite as JavaBeans, simply import
JAR file archiveaccessor.jar into a particular builder tool you
are using.

For example, to use the beans inside Semantec Visual Cafe select 
the Component into Library command in the Insert menu and choose
archiveaccessor.jar in the File dialog. You will see the
ArchiveAccessor Beans in the Component Library window.


b) Using the ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite via the APIs provided

For using the ArchiveAccessor Beans in an application, you should
have the archiveaccessor.jar file in your CLASSPATH. You should
read the JavaDoc API documentation provided to find out more about
APIs that the components support. You can also see the demo
application source code.


Known Problems
--------------

1. Semantec Visual Cafe problem:
   It is possible to connect any event only with a non-void
   method with 0-1 parameters visually ( VC feature ).

2. BeanBox problem:
   ArchiveAccessor does not  work properly in BeanBox from the
   Bean Development Kit. BeanBox does not process method calls,
   declared with a key word "throws".

3. Visual Age problem:
   Saving an archive file with a non-valid name (when
   the length of a file name exceeds the possible file name length
   for the given operation system, or contains non-valid symbols 
   for the given system). Beans behave differently while working 
   under VisualAge and out of it.

4. On attempt to put files of 10MB volume by one add operation, 
   a problem happens.


Contents of This Release
------------------------

The archiveaccessor.zip file contains:

  Readme.txt    - this file.
  License.txt   - contains alphaBeans License Agreement
  lib           - the directory contains library jar files
  FAQ.txt       - Frequently Asked Questions.
  docs          - the directory contains bean description files
                  and the JavaDoc generated API description 
                  for the ArchiveAccessor Bean Suite.
  demo          - the directory contains two demo applications
                  that you can run to get accustomed to the
                  ArchiveAccessor bean.
  image         - The image directory has the .zip file which 
                  contains the GIF files for the Palette Category 
                  (i.e. for VA/Java use). 

-------------------------

Copyright (c) 1998, IBM Corporation. All rights reserved.