=pod

README for pd external 'sprinkler' (formerly 'forward')

=head1 DESCRIPTION

'sprinkler' objects do dynamic control-message dissemination.

Given a list as input, a 'sprinkler' object interprets the initial
list element as the name of a 'receive' object, and [send]s the
rest of the list to that object.

=head1 INSTALLATION

Issue the following commands to the shell:

   cd sprinkler-X.YY  (or wherever you extracted the distribution)
   ./configure
   make
   make install

=head1 BUILD OPTIONS

The 'configure' script supports the following options, among others:

=over 4

=item --enable-debug , --disable-debug

Whether to enable verbose debugging messages.
Default=no.

=item --enable-forward , --disable-forward

Whether to create [forward] objects as instances
of the [sprinkler] class (MAX-incompatible).
Default=no.

=item --enable-all-forwardmess , --disable-all-forwardmess

Whether to use pd_forwardmess() for all messages.  If this
option is disabled (the default), messages of length 1 will
be handled specially; thus a symbol 'foo' will be passed as
'symbol foo', rather than just 'foo'.

Default=no.

Future versions of 'sprinkler' may use pd_forwardmess() for
all messages by default -- go on, try it!

=back

=head1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PD by Miller Puckette and others.

Ideas, black magic, and other nuggets of information drawn
from code by Guenter Geiger, Larry Troxler, and iohannes m zmoeling.

Thanks to Krzysztof Czaja for pointing out to me the existence of MAX "forward",
and to Miller Puckette for the name "sprinkler".

Thanks to Erasmus Zipfel for a bugreport and useful ideas.

=head1 KNOWN BUGS

One of the acknowledgements used to be in this section.
Sorry, folks.

Backwards-compatible version is incompatible with MAX.

Semantic strangeness with singleton messages is somewhat cryptic.

=head1 AUTHOR

Bryan Jurish E<lt>moocow@ling.uni-potsdam.deE<gt>