--- /dev/null
+%%% -*-latex-*-
+%%%
+%%% Tutorial information
+%%%
+%%% (c) 2009 Straylight/Edgeware
+%%%
+
+%%%----- Licensing notice ---------------------------------------------------
+%%%
+%%% This file is part of the Simple Object Definition system.
+%%%
+%%% SOD 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.
+%%%
+%%% SOD 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 SOD; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
+%%% Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
+
+\chapter{Tutorial}
+\label{ch:tut}
+
+This chapter provides a tutorial introduction to the Sod object system. It
+intentionally misses out nitty-gritty details. If you want those, the
+remaining chapters provide a complete reference to Sod.
+
+The author isn't terribly good at writing tutorial-style documentation.
+You'll have to bear with him. If you think you can do a better job, I'm sure
+that he'll be grateful for your contribution.
+
+%%%--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+\section{Introduction} \label{sec:tut.intro}
+
+Sod is an object system for the C~programming language. Because it doesn't
+have enough already. Actually, that's not right: it's got plenty already.
+But Sod is a Sensible Object Design, and C doesn't have any of those.
+
+What does that mean when the author's not off on one of his tirades? It
+means that is has the following features.
+\begin{itemize}
+\item It has a \emph{minimal runtime system}. Sod isn't likely to interfere
+ with other language runtimes or be difficult to deal with from a practical
+ point of view.
+\item It provides \emph{multiple inheritance}. Rather than having a single
+ superclass, Sod allows a class to specify any number of superclasses.
+ Moreover, it implements multiple inheritance using \emph{superclass
+ linearization}, which means that it's not a nightmare to deal with.
+\item It provides multiple \emph{method rôles}, including `before', `after'
+ and `around' methods, which makes constructing object protocols rather more
+ straightforward.
+\item It provides a number of \emph{method combinations}. For those coming
+ from languages other than Lisp, a method combination is a rule for deciding
+ how to invoke the various methods which might be used to respond to a
+ message. (This might still sound like a strange idea. We'll deal with it
+ in detail later.)
+\item It allows \emph{user-defined method combinations}. It does a whole lot
+ more: there's an entire translation-time \emph{meta-object protocol}, so
+ that extensions can modify many different aspects of the object system.
+ The downside is that you have to learn Common Lisp and roll up your sleeves
+ if you want to do any of this.
+\end{itemize}
+There's a good chance that half of that didn't mean anything to you. Bear
+with me, though, because we'll explain it all eventually.
+
+\subsection{Building programs with Sod} \label{sec:tut.intro.build}
+
+Sod is basically a fancy preprocessor, in the same vein as Lex and Yacc. It
+reads source files written in a vaguely C-like language. It produces output
+files which are actually C code (both header files and standalone sources),
+and which contain chunks of the input files verbatim.
+
+The main consequences of this are as follows.
+\begin{itemize}
+\item The output is completely portable between different machines and
+ compilers. If you're preparing a source distribution for general release,
+ it's probably a good idea to provide the generated C~source as well as your
+ Sod sources.
+\item Sod hasn't made any attempt to improve C's syntax. It's just as
+ hostile to object-oriented programming as it ever was. This means that
+ you'll end up writing ugly things like
+ \begin{prog}%
+ thing->_vt->foo.frob(thing, mumble);%
+ \end{prog}
+ fairly frequently. This can be made somewhat less painful using macros,
+ but we're basically stuck with C. The upside is that you know exactly what
+ you're getting. A common complaint about \Cplusplus\ is that it has a
+ tendency to hide arbitrarily complicated runtime behaviour behind
+ apparently innocent syntax: you don't get any of that with Sod. Some
+ people might even think this is a benefit.
+\end{itemize}
+Of course, this means that your build system needs to become more
+complicated. If you use \man{make}{1}, then something like
+\begin{prog}%
+ SOD = sod
+
+ .SUFFIXES: .sod .c .h
+ .sod.c:; \$(SOD) -gc -o \$@@ \$<
+ .sod.h:; \$(SOD) -gh -o \$@@ \$< %
+\end{prog}
+ought to do the job.
+
+%%%--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+\section{A traditional trivial introduction}
+
+The following is a simple Sod input file.
+\begin{prog}\quad\=\quad\=\kill%
+/* -*-sod-*- */
+
+code c : includes \{
+\#include "greeter.h"
+\}
+
+code h : includes \{
+\#include <stdio.h>
+\#include <sod.h>
+\}
+
+class Greeter : SodObject \{ \+
+ void greet(FILE *fp) \{ \+
+ fputs("Hello, world!\textbackslash n", fp); \-
+ \} \-
+\} %
+\end{prog}
+Save it as @"greeter.sod", and run
+\begin{prog}%
+sod --gc --gh greeter %
+\end{prog}
+This will create files @"greeter.c" and @"greeter.h" in the current
+directory. Here's how we might use such a simple thing.
+\begin{prog}\quad\=\kill%
+\#include "greeter.h"
+
+int main(void)
+\{ \+
+ struct Greeter__ilayout g_obj;
+ Greeter *g = Greeter__class->cls.init(\&g_obj);
+
+ g->_vt.greeter.greet(g, stdout);
+ return (0); \-
+\} %
+\end{prog}
+Compare this to the traditional
+\begin{prog}\quad\=\kill%
+\#include <stdio.h>
+
+int main(void) \+
+ \{ fputs("Hello, world\\n", stdout); return (0); \} %
+\end{prog}
+and I'm sure you'll appreciate the benefits of using Sod already -- mostly to
+do with finger exercise. Trust me, it gets more useful.
+
+The @".sod" file was almost comprehensible. There are two important parts to
+it (after the comment which tells Emacs how to cope with it).
+
+The first part consists of the two @"code" stanzas. Both of them define
+gobbets of raw C code to copy into output files. The first one, @"code~:
+c"~\ldots, says that
+\begin{prog}%
+ \#include "greeter.h" %
+\end{prog}
+needs to appear in the generated @|greeter.c| file; the second says that
+\begin{prog}%
+ \#include <stdio.h>
+ \#include <sod.h> %
+\end{prog}
+needs to appear in the header file @|greeter.h|. The generated C files need
+to get declarations for external types and functions (e.g., @"FILE" and
+@"fputs") from somewhere, and the generated @".c" file will need the
+declarations from the corresponding @".h" file. Sod takes a very simple
+approach to all of this: it expects you, the programmer, to deal with it.
+
+The basic syntax for @"code" stanzas is
+\begin{prog}\quad\=\kill%
+ code @<file-label> : @<section> \{
+ \> @<code>
+ \} %
+\end{prog}
+The @<file-label> is either @"c" or @"h", and says which output file the code
+wants to be written to. The @<section> is a name which explains where in the
+output file to place the code. The @"includes" section is the usual choice:
+it's the `right' place for @`\#include' directives and similar declarations.
+
+The remaining part, the `meat' of the file, defines a class called
+@"greeter". The class can respond to a single message, named @"greet", and
+in response, it writes a traditional greeting to the file passed in with the
+message.
+
+So far, so good. The C code, which we thought we understood, contains some
+bizarre looking runes. Let's take it one step at a time.
+\begin{prog}%
+ struct Greeter__ilayout g_obj; %
+\end{prog}
+allocates space for an instance of class @"Greeter". We're not going to use
+this space directly. Instead, we do this frightening looking thing.
+\begin{prog}%
+ Greeter *g = Greeter__class->cls.init(\&g_obj); %
+\end{prog}
+Taking it slowly: @"Greeter__class" is a pointer to the object that
+represents our class @"Greeter". This object contains a member, named
+@"cls.init", which points to a function whose job is to turn uninitialized
+storage space into working instances of the class. It returns a pointer to
+the instance, which we use in preference to grovelling about in the
+@"ilayout" structure.
+
+Having done this, we `send the instance a message':
+\begin{prog}%
+ g->_vt->greeter.greet(g, stdout); %
+\end{prog}
+This looks horrific, and seems to repeat itself quite unnecessarily. The
+first @"g" is the recipient of our `message'. The second is indeed a copy of
+the first: we have to tell it who it is. (Sod doesn't extend C's syntax, so
+this is the sort of thing we just have to put up with.) The lowercase
+@"greeter" is our class's `nickname': we didn't choose one explicitly, so Sod
+picked one by forcing the classname to lowercase.
+
+%%%----- That's all, folks --------------------------------------------------
+
+%%% Local variables:
+%%% mode: LaTeX
+%%% TeX-master: "sod.tex"
+%%% TeX-PDF-mode: t
+%%% End:
~mdw / sod / blobdiff