Introduction

	The GenInfo Software Toolbox is a set of software and data exchange 
specifications that are used by NCBI to produce portable, modular software for 
molecular biology.  We make this software and specifications available to the 
community for use in its own right, or as a foundation for building other 
tools with similar properties.  All software produced by NCBI and here 
provided includes the following copyright notice:
   **************************************************************************
   *                                                                        *
   *              National Center for Biotechnology Information             *
   *       Bldg. 38A, NIH,  8600 Rockville Pike,  Bethesda, MD  20894       *
   *                                                                        *
   *                             COPYRIGHT NOTICE                           *
   *                                                                        *
   * This software/database is "United States Government Work" under the    *
   * terms of the United States Copyright Act.  It was written as part of   *
   * the author's official duties as a Government employee and thus cannot  *
   * be copyrighted.  This software/database is freely available to the     *
   * public for use without a copyright notice.  Restrictions cannot be     *
   * placed on its present or future use.                                   *
   *                                                                        *
   * Although all reasonable efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy *
   * and reliability of the software and data, the National Library of      *
   * Medicine (NLM) and the U.S. Government does not and cannot warrant the *
   * performance or results that may be obtained by using this software or  *
   * data.  The NLM and the U.S. Government disclaims all warranties as to  *
   * performance, merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.    *
   *                                                                        *
   * In any work or product derived from this material, proper attribution  *
   * of the author as the source of the software or data would be           *
   * appreciated.                                                           *
   *                                                                        *
   **************************************************************************

	In those cases where software is made available from other sources,
other restrictions may apply.


Directory Structure

	These files are available for anonymous ftp from "ncbi.nlm.nih.gov".
The directory structure is as follows:

    toolbox       - top level toolbox directory
	isode          - OSI development environment (from ISO)
	osikit         - OSI development tools from NIST
                           (includes free value tool)
	ncbi_parser_s  - ASN.1 parser based on S expressions by Peter Karp
	asn1_0.5       - v.0.5 ASN.1 specification for GenInfo Backbone,
                           and sample files



isode

	This is a very large system of tools from ISO for use in prototyping
OSI applications.  It includes many large tools in one file, and 5 volumes of 
PostScript documentation in the other file.  The documentation is good for 
learning about OSI.  There is an ASN.1 compiler which will give you the 
flavor of what can be done with these tools.  This is not a simple or terribly 
efficient system.


osikit

	This is a set of tools from NIST (formerly the Bureau of Standards) 
to assist development of OSI applications.  It includes the free value tool,
which can read and validate an ASN.1 specification and produce an encoder and
decoder for both the print form and basic encoding rules form.  We find it
very useful for checking syntax on both specifications and data objects.  The
limitation is that in the print form, the tool can only accept VisibleStrings
all on one line, and less than 200 chars in length.


ncbi_parser_s

	A parser for ASN.1 print files written by Peter Karp.  It parses print 
files into S expressions which makes a simple, flexible way to input data 
objects.  It does no checking on syntax or content.  See the README for more 
details.


asn_0.5

	This contains the ASN.1 specification for the GenInfo Backbone 
(version 0.5), and a number of sample data files.